Big rat, big rat,
Do not gobble our millet !
Three years we have slaved for you,
Yet you take no notice of us.
At last we are going to leave you
And go to that happy land ;
Happy land, happy land,
Where we shall have our place.
Big rat, big rat,
Do not gobble our corn !
Three years we have slaved for you,
Yet you give us no credit.
At last we are going to leave you
And go to that happy kingdom ;
Happy kingdom, happy kingdom,
Where we shall get our due.
Big rat, big
rat,
Do not eat
our rice-shoots !
Three years
we have slaved for you.
Yet you did nothing to reward us.
At last we
are going to leave you
And go to
those happy borders ;
Happy
borders, happy borders
Where no sad
songs are sung.
From: The Book Of Songs, translated from the
Chinese by Arthur Waley, New York, Grove Press, 1960.
All
images Banksy except below Blek-Le-Rat.
Rat by the wall feels just right today. That wall is awful high.
ReplyDeleteThe poem probably dates to 1000 -- 800 BC. Waley places it a couple of hundred years later, but I assume more research has been done since the 1960 Grove Press edition of The Book of Songs. Amazing, isn't it? The poem appears in the Lamentations section and the songs there aren't Waley's favorites of those included in this remarkable collection. An updated edition was published by Grove/Atlantic in 1997, I think, and I would like to own and read it. The Book of Songs, as you may know, comprises one of the five classic/basic Confucian texts. Reading about this the other day gave me some minor insight into something else that's been on-and-off on my mind. I really love this poem/song. It speaks to me very strongly and directly. So does this beautiful day, which is a blessed relief. For what it's worth, we like Banksy a lot, but Jane's a real Blek-le-Rat girl. Curtis
ReplyDeleteRats are so smart and disgusting. Of course, growing up on a farm--they were always into everything. Impossible to get rid of, too. The cats did a good job on them, and the black snakes, which my mother tried to keep farmhands from killing . .. And when my daughter was in the Peace Corps, rats ate her suit case. Completely.
ReplyDeleteThey are indeed very smart. I kind of like them, but from a non-destructive (to me) distance. Growing up in the suburbs, I was aware of mice, but not rats until one summer when I worked as a golf caddy and saw them from time-to-time scurrying around the golf course. And of course like all subway riding New Yorkers, one would see them racing along and across the tracks. The still uncompleted Second Avenue subway project caused a big rat migration on the Upper East Side, which wasn't good. Later in Mallorca, I was surprised to learn that field rats formed the basis of a traditional fried dish. (I can send you the recipe.) The rats in this poem, I read, refer to tax collectors, which makes sense, although in my mind I generalized them to comprise all unwelcome (likely governmental) authority figures. Many of our own cats are fearsome mousers, but that's a side of life and death I gratefully let Caroline handle. Curtis
ReplyDelete