Topic: Losing My Teeth

[Nichi]

Losing My Teeth

Last year a tooth dropped,
this year another one,
then six or seven went fast
and the falling is not going to stop.
All the rest are loose
and it will end when they are all gone.
I remember when I lost the first
I felt ashamed of the gap.
When two or three followed,
I worried about death.
When one is about to come loose,
I am anxious and fearful
since forked teeth are awkward with food,
and in dread I tilt my face to rinse my mouth.
Eventually it will abandon me and drop
just like a landslide.
By now the falling-out is old hat,
each tooth goes just like the others.
Fortunately I have about twenty left.
One by one they will go in order.
If one goes each year,
I have enough to last two dozen years.
Actually it does not make much difference
if they go together or separately.
People say when teeth fall out
your life is fading.
I say life has its own end;
long life, short life, we all die.
People speak of the gaps in my teeth,
and all gaze at me in shock.
I quote Zhuangzi's story –
a tree and a wild goose each has its advantages,
and though silence is better than slurring my words
and though I can't chew, at least soft food tastes great
and I can sing out this poem
to surprise my wife and kids.

Han Yu
9th Century China
Confucian


Note: written in 803 when Han Yu was 36 years old. Zhuangzi tells the story of how he met a woodsman in the mountains who chose not to cut down a tree with useless wood. Afterwards he visited a friend who wanted to slaughter him one of his two geese, one of which could sing and one of which could not, and killed the one who didn't greet his guest. His student asked Zhuangzi, “That tree because it's useless was able to survive, but the goose because it couldn't sing was slaughtered. What do you think about that?” Zhuangzi answered, “I stand between the two,” meaning you shouldn't be too useful and shouldn't be too useless.

       Han Yu was born in 768 in Nanyang, Henan province, to a literary family. He is considered to be among China's finest prose writers, second only to Sima Qian, and he is the first among the Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song. His father died when he was two, and he was raised in the family of his older brother, Han Hui. He taught himself to read and write and was a student of philosophical writings and of Confucian thought. His family moved to Changan in 774, but was banished to southern China in 777 due to their association with disgraced minister Yuan Zai. Han Hui died in 781, leaving the family in poverty, and they returned north around 784. In 792, after four attempts, he passed the Imperial Exam (Jin Shi), and a few years later went into the service of the military governor of Bianzhou, and later of the military governor of Xuzhou. Finally, in 802, he obtained a post as instructor at the Imperial University, a job that he held periodically, between other postings and several periods of exile; ultimately he was made Rector of the university. After a number of other distinguished posts in the government, he died at the age of 56 in Changan.
         He was a Confucian thinker, and was deeply opposed to Buddhism, a religion which was then popular in the court. In fact, he came close to being executed in 819 for sending a letter to the emperor in which he denounced “the elaborate preparations being made by the state to receive the Budda's fingerbone, which he called 'a filthy object' and which he said should be 'handed over to the proper officials for destruction by water and fire to eradicate forever its origin.'” He believed that literature and ethics were intertwined, and led a revolution in prose style against the formal ornamentation then popular. He championed instead gu wen (old style prose), which was characterized by simplicity, logic and an emphasis on apt and exact expression. He was the center of a group of prose writers who adopted this style, a group which included Meng Jiao, whose poetry Han Yu appreciated. Other writers included in this anthology who adopted this style include Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi (Su Dongpo). While Han Yu's lasting reputation lies as a prose innovator, he was also a fine poet.
http://www.thedrunkenboat.com/han.html