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82
Month at Luntai 166 ” (“Shouqiuluntai” 首 秋 轮 台 ):
异 域 阴 山 外
In other lands 167 beyond Yin mountain,
孤 城 雪 海 边 Isolated town by Snow Lake. 168
秋 来 唯 有 雁
Autumn arrives with only the geese,
169
夏 尽 不 闻 蝉 Summer's end and one does not hear the cicada.
(lines 1-4)
Silenced cicada, which otherwise should be chirping, characterize the frontier through an act of
negation; the autumnal geese further signal the familiar poetic taxonomy of depression and separation.
Were Cen Shen's poem to cease at the fourth line, it would sink into a symphony of so many similarsounding
sighs. However, the delicately unusual and discordant lurks inside the poem. In this instance
it is not startling geography but the stench of local furnishings made wet by the rain which injects the
poem with an element of the non-conventional in portraying the frontier region:
雨 拂 毡 墙 湿
风 摇 毳 幕 膻
轮 台 万 里 地
171
无 事 厉 三 年
A slight brush of rain and the felt walls dampen,
A stirring of wind and the fine fur curtains stink of
mutton. 170
Luntai, a place ten-thousand li distant,
Nothing to attend to at the moment; three years have
(lines 5-8)
passed.
166
According to page 182 of the CSJJZ, the poem was written in 756, making it a rather late example of Cen Shen's
frontier verse. The poem becomes quite noteworthy when considering how even towards the end of his seven (noncontinuous)
years spent in the north-west, easily recognized motifs of frontier poetry could still be found in Cen Shen's
texts.
167
Here referring to the north-west. 异 域 (yiyu), as meaning “other lands” (or “different/ foreign lands”), is found in the
second of Gao Shi's “Ji Gate” (“Jimenxing wushou” 蓟 门 行 五 首 ): The house of Han can is able to use weapons/to open
up the very ends of other lands” 汉 家 能 用 武 , 开 拓 穷 异 域 . See GSJJZ, p. 35.
168
Or “Sea of Snow”. As an actual place, “Snow Lake” is within roughly one hundred miles “Hot Lake” (Rehai 热 海 or
Lake Issyk Kul in modern day Krygyzstan). The term, however, also connotes a scene of broad, dense snow.
169
CSJJZ, p. 182
170
Many decades later, the poet-narrator of Guan Xiu's 贯 休 “Below the Ancient Frontier” (”Gusaixiaqu sishou” 古 塞 下
曲 四 首 ) would have a similar olfactory reaction to the frontier in general: “The ancient frontier, a place that smells like
mutton/Hu soldiers gather together like flies” 古 塞 腥 膻 地 , 胡 兵 聚 如 蝇 . See QTS 827.9321.
171
CSJJZ., p. 182