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188<br />
One way <strong>of</strong> responding to the aches <strong>of</strong> homesickness and pains <strong>of</strong> separation caused by such vastness is<br />
for the poet-narrator <strong>of</strong> Cen Shen's poems to utilize existents <strong>of</strong> the setting to link himself, if rather<br />
tenuously, with his home east <strong>of</strong> the borderlands. In Cen Shen's frontier poetry, these efforts on the part<br />
<strong>of</strong> the poet-narrator to alleviate feelings <strong>of</strong> homesickness involve the Wei river 59 (weishui 渭 水 ), a<br />
commissioner (shi 使 ) heading back to the capital, 60 and a parrot, 61 a trio <strong>of</strong> existents that when<br />
focalized through a psychological facet overwhelmed by a longing to return home become vehicles for<br />
soothing the poet-narrator's nostalgic desire to connect with places he left in order to serve on China's<br />
northwestern border regions.<br />
The first frontier setting existent which the poet-narrator employs to connect himself with home<br />
is the eastward flowing Wei river in “Passing West Through Weizhou: Seeing the Wei River I Think <strong>of</strong><br />
the Qin Waters”:<br />
渭 水 东 流 去<br />
何 时 到 雍 州<br />
凭 添 两 行 泪<br />
62<br />
寄 向 故 园 流<br />
The waters <strong>of</strong> the Wei river flow east,<br />
When will they reach Yongzhou?<br />
I add to the waters two streams <strong>of</strong> tears,<br />
And send them flowing towards my home.<br />
Before discussing how the poet-narrator focalizes the river and his own tears as a means <strong>of</strong> overcoming<br />
the distance between himself and home, it should be noted that by simply being a river flowing east “as<br />
most rivers do in China”, the Wei river also possesses connotations <strong>of</strong> unending motion, longing and<br />
the suffering <strong>of</strong> separation. 63 In fact, another mobile body <strong>of</strong> water featured prominently in Cen Shen's<br />
59<br />
“Passing West Through Weizhou: Seeing the Wei River I Think <strong>of</strong> the Qin Waters” (“Xi guo Weizhou jian Weishui si<br />
Qin chuan” 西 过 渭 州 见 渭 水 思 秦 川 ).<br />
60<br />
“Encountering a Commissioner on His Way to the Capital” (“Feng ru jing shi” 逢 入 京 使 ).<br />
61<br />
“When Heading to Beiting and Passing Long Mountain I Think <strong>of</strong> Home” (“Fu Beiting du Long si jia” 赴 北 庭 度 陇 思<br />
家 ).<br />
62<br />
CSJJZ, p. 75.<br />
63<br />
Burton Watson, Chinese Lyricism, p. 135; Hans Frankel, The Flowering Plum and Palace Lady, pp. 86-87; and Stephen<br />
Owen, The Poetry <strong>of</strong> the Early T'ang, p. 130.