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191
为 报 家 人 数 寄 书
Send word for me and inform those at home to send
more letters.
Here the all too frequent feeling of homesickness on the frontier directs the attention of the
poet-narrator's perception of a parrot (yingwu 鹦 鹉 ) towards the linguistic skills (neng yanyu 能 言 语 )
of the animal, presumably hoping that in concert with the bird's volant feature the likelihood of fewer
dispatches from home (xiang xin ri ying shu 乡 信 日 应 疏 ) can be forestalled with a message to those
far away to send more letters (wei bao jiaren shu ji shu 为 报 家 人 数 寄 书 ). As with the previous texts,
the poet-narrator is relying on an existent of the frontier setting to shrink the chasm between the
borderlands and home in order to relieve the anguish of separation, ironically seeking assistance from
an existent of the setting to mitigate the misery initially caused by the setting itself.
The immediately preceding pages detailed how homesick emotions were influential in the poetnarrators'
acts of perception. While in a state of sorrow, a sadness brought on by separation from home,
the poet-narrators' perception in “Passing West Through Weizhou” and “Encountering a Commissioner
on His Way to the Capital” became focused on the eastward moving aspects of the Wei river and
commissioner. Aside from such attention exhibiting the desire of the poet-narrators to return east, their
perception of this aspect of the Wei river and commissioner, and the connection made with the river
and commissioner by way of tears and a message, was also a vain attempt to bridge the distance
between themselves and their home in the east. The parrot in “When Heading to Beiting and Passing
Long Mountain” was also perceived with this intention. But in this poem it was not the parrot's
(Jun., 1979), pp. 39-54, especially pp. 42, 50. The parrots' language skills and habitat can be found early in Mi Heng's
poem: “This marvellous bird from the Western Region,/Endowed by nature with unusual beauty,/Possesses the bright
flames of the fire element./Intelligent and capable of speech,/Clever and gifted with foreknowledge...Thus the
emperor,/Attracted by its far-reaching reputation,/Admiring the beauty of its form,/Sends his forester to the Long
Mountains,/Dispatches Bo Yi to the Moving Sands,/Deploys archers across Kunlun,/Spreads nets about the clouds and
rainbows...” See William Graham, tr., “Mi Heng's Rhapsody on a Parrot”, pp. 45-46. 唯 西 域 之 灵 鸟 兮 , 挺 自 然 之 奇 姿 .
体 金 精 之 妙 质 兮 , 合 火 德 之 明 辉 . 性 辩 慧 而 能 言 兮 , 才 聪 明 以 识 机 ... 于 是 羡 芳 声 之 远 畅 , 伟 灵 表 之 可 嘉 . 命 虞 人 于 陇
坻 , 诏 伯 益 于 流 沙 . 跨 昆 仑 而 播 弋 , 冠 云 霓 而 张 罗 . See Wenxuan 13.25-26 in SKQS.