Mei Yaochen: Eulogy for Five White (Simao)

Since I got my cat Five White,
the rats never bother my books.
This morning Five White died.
I make offerings of rice and fish,
bury you in mid-river
with incantations—I wouldn’t slight you.
Once you caught a rat,
ran around the garden with it squeaking in your mouth;
you hoped to put a scare into the other rats,
to clean up my house.
When we’d come aboard the boat
you shared our cabin,
and though we’d nothing but meager dried rations,
we ate them without fear of rat piss and gnawing—
because you were diligent,
a good deal more so than the pigs and chickens.
People make much of their prancing steeds;
they tell me nothing can compare to a horse or donkey—
enough!—I’ll argue the point no longer,
only cry for you a little.

Tr. Burton Watson. Mei (1002-1060) was a late-flowering poet and late-flowering bureaucrat (he passed the infamous imperial Chinese civil service examination at the age of forty-nine!), and the evidence is that he was a much better poet than bureaucrat.