Saturday, July 10, 2010
A Poem by Liu Zongyuan
Liu Zongyuan (773-819), tr. Mark Elvin in The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 19:
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The official guardians' axes have spread through a thousand hills,
At the Works Department's orders hacking rafter-beams and billets.
Of ten trunks cut in the woodlands' depths, only one gets hauled away.
Ox-teams strain at their traces — till the paired yoke-shafts break.
Great-girthed trees of towering height lie blocking the forest tracks,
A tumbled confusion of timber, as flames on the hillside crackle.
Not even the remaining shrubs are safeguarded from destruction;
Where once the mountain torrents leapt — nothing but rutted gullies.
Timbers, not yet seasoned or used, left immature to rot;
Proud summits and deep-sunk gorges now — brief hummocks of naked rock.
Labels: arboricide
