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Historical Reflections
The Emperor has four hundred wives
with flower faces framed by jet.
Mai Lin can pluck a thousand tunes,
Yin Feng knows all erotic arts.
They drink spiced wine in jasper cups
as the snow beats against the windows;
the mob outside is howling for grain.
The Son of Heaven orders a new diversion
And the Mongols are whirling down from the steppes.

The governor of Kwangsi province
contemplates his plans of vengeance:
He takes the heavy rebel bribe.
The Imperial troops are mauled and shamed.
The Mongols have crossed the Huang-Ho river.

The Confucian minister practices rites
he no longer believes in.
Religion must be upheld for the people.
But that foreign doctrine of the Buddha's
must be persecuted with vigor, for
the nuns and monks refuse to bear children
for the defense of the Empire.
The Mongols have taken Ch'angan.

The public treasury is empty,
And the Son of Heaven is deep in debt;
the harvest was meager, the crops blighted.
Famine panics two provinces.
The peasants join bandit armies
and reduce the lords to pounded meat:
The Emperor's agents are bought or killed.
Peasants sell their children as slaves,
the women all turn to prostitution
and the currency is worthless.
A sack of rice is worth a limb,

And the Mongols are building mountains of skulls.

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