"On all four sides, nobody speaks"

Skimming through the Owen Notebooks, making little notes here and there, not studying too seriously. I really liked this one. There is tropic story teller language here: "on all for sides, nobody speaks," "We want to hear" and "Please, tell us." And yet, not a story exactly, but more like the fragment of an epic. This makes me believe that there is a Chinese epic, but it is a networked form, only understandable as anthology: Shijing, Wen xuan, Yu tai xin yong.

On all four sides, nobody speaks.
We want to hear just a bit of that song!
Please, tell us about that bronze censer
towering high like South Mountain.


The one with tendrils pushing upward, like cypresses and pines,
And roots flowing downward that clutch a basin of bronze.
The one with engraved patterns each of a different kind,
And openwork inlays, each connected to the other.
Who could have made a vessel like this?
Gongshuban, perhaps, famous Sage of Carpenters.
A red fire lights up in the censer,
celadon smoke blows out from within.
Into your heart it goes, wafted with the wind."
On all four sides, nobody can stop their sighs.
Ah, that scented breeze hardly stays for long --
It's nothing, really, but faint traces of women's perfume.

四坐且莫諠　　願聽歌一言
請說銅鑪器　　崔嵬象南山
上枝以松柏　　下根據銅盤
雕文各異類　　離婁自相聯
誰能為此器　　公輸與魯班
朱火然其中　　青煙颺其間
從風入君懷　　四坐莫不歎
香風難久居　　空令蕙草殘

The censer here:"Fairy mountain incense burner (Boshan xianglu), excavated in 1968. Bronze inlaid with gold. From the tomb of Liu Sheng (d. 113 B.C.E.., brother of Western Han emperor Wu) at Mancheng, Hebei. 26 cm H; 3.4 kg. Hebei Provincial Museum, Shijiazhuang." -- thanks to this page.

Owen's "melilotus" or huicao 蕙草 is a flowering herb that women would gather to perfume their bodies. I'm guess quite a bit with the last line; I sort of feel like the mention of the herb is allegorical: the censer is the herb that perfumes the empire; the unseen woman is China. I'm certain Owen and others would call that over-reading. I over-read? So I over-read. It's my poem now.



Gongshu, perhaps, aka 'Ban of Lu,' legendary King of the Carpenters. They say he invented the 'cloud ladders' 雲梯 (offensive weaponry described by Mozi in a rebuke to Gongshu) and the carpenter's plane 刨. This article re-examines his role in the "Gongshuban" chapter of the Mozi.