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(“Song of Hot Lake”, lines 7-8 and 11-12)
缭 绕 斜 吞 铁 关 树
氛 氲 半 掩 交 河 戍
Curling, coiling and all aslant they [Fire Mountain clouds]
swallow the trees at Iron Pass,
A hazy mist half covering the garrison barracks
at Jiaohe.
(“Song of Fire Mountain Clouds”, lines 7-8)
A definite preponderance of incendiary and aggressive verbs 44 also assist in portraying a thermal
landscape of uncontrollable, if unconscious, violence thundering across Cen Shen's fiery worlds.
“Burning”, a translation of both 烧 (shao) and 燃 (ran), is the most common destructive act; the “red
smoke” (chi yan 赤 焰 ) of “Passing Fire Mountain” and “steaming sands...shining 45 rocks” (zhengsha
shuoshi 蒸 沙 烁 石 ) of “Song of Hot Lake” mercilessly expose the terrain's heat by nearly incinerating
nearby atmospheric entities of the frontier itself, the “Lu clouds” (lu yun 虏 云 ). Even Fire Mountain's
clouds, unlike their victimized Lu siblings, partake in this abuse of frontier existents by “swallowing
the trees at Metal Pass” (tun tieguan shu 吞 铁 关 树 ) and “covering the garrison barracks at Jiaohe” (yan
jiaohe shu 掩 交 河 戍 ).
The conflagrative mayhem that is the expression of the landscapes' thermality also extends into
the frontier space beyond the immediate atmosphere. After first focalizing the relatively interior clouds,
the poet-narrators of both “Passing Fire Mountain” and “Song of Hot Lake” focalize the frontier's
periphery as an object of the landscape's thermal rage. In the former poem's instance, “blistering
vapours” (yanqi 炎 气 ) of Fire Mountain reach into the “frontier emptiness” (saikong 塞 空 ) itself,
“steaming” (zheng 蒸 ) the wider expanse of northwestern China. But compared to Hot Lake, Fire
44 “Passing Fire Mountain”: burn (shao 烧 ), steam (zheng 蒸 ); “Song of Fire Mountain Clouds”: swallow (tun 吞 ); and
“Song of Hot Lake”: burn (ran 燃 ), boil (jian 煎 ), swallow ( 吞 ), attack (qin 侵 ).
45 Or melting.