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242
赴 北 庭 度 陇 思 家
When Heading to Beiting and Passing Long Mountain I
Think of Home 62
西 向 轮 台 万 里 余
也 知 乡 信 日 应 疏
陇 山 鹦 鹉 能 言 语
64
为 报 家 人 数 寄 书
West towards Luntai 63 is over ten thousand li,
I also know that letters from home will be scarcer
by the day.
The parrots of Long mountain are able to speak:
Send word for me and inform those at home to send
more letters. 65
62 After returning to Chang'an in 751, Cen Shen returned to the frontier in 754 to serve on the staff of Feng Changqing 封
常 清 . Beiting 's 北 庭 original territory is north of present day Jimusa'er 吉 木 萨 尔 Xinjiang Autonomous Region.
63 Tang dynasty Luntai 轮 台 was located in the environs of today's Miquan county 米 泉 县 , Xinjiang Autonomous Region.
64 CSJJZ, p. 141.
65 The parrots of Long mountain can be found just under six hundred years earlier in Mi Heng's 弥 衡 (173-198)
“Rhapsody on a Parrot” (“Yingwu fu” 鹦 鹉 赋 ). The poem is “the most important extant work by Mi Heng...an eccentric,
unpredictable and sometimes arrogant young genius who lived at the end of the Han dynasty...It is ostensibly a
representative example of the subgenre of the rhapsody known as 咏 物 赋 (yongwu fu “rhapsody on an object”)...The
first third of the rhapsody is a treatment of the background and rare properties of the parrot. It is the remaining sixty-odd
lines that the poet...expresses the parrot's misery over its fate and captive state...an allegorical plea to be freed from his
own captivity and allowed to return north [after having offended Cao Cao 曹 操 and banished south]”. See See William
H. Nienhauser, Jr., ed., The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, pp. 625-626 and William T. Graham,
Jr., “Mi Heng's Rhapsody on a Parrot“, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 39, No. 1 (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.