This line comes from an untitled poem by Li Shang-Yin (812-58), p. 147 in the book

(iii)
Bite black passion. Spring now sets.
Watch little by little the night turn around.
Echoes in the house; want to go up, dare not.
A glow behind the screen; wish to go through, cannot.
It would hurt too much, the swallow on a hairpin;

Truly shame me, the phoenix on a mirror.

On the road back, sunrise over Heng-t'ang.

The blossoming of the morning star shines farewell on

the jewelled saddle.

[Heng-t'ang was a pleasure quarter; cf. Li Ho's High Dike.]

Taken from another Li Shang-Yin poem, "Willow" p. 154

Willow

['Willow eyebrows' is a phrase used for both willow leaves and arched eyebrows.]

Boundless the leaves roused by spring,
Countless the twigs which tremble in the dawn.
Whether the willow can love or not,
Never a time when it does not dance.
Blown fluff hides white butterflies,
Drooping bands disclose the yellow oriole.

The beauty which shakes a kingdom must reach through

all the body:
Who comes only to view the willow's eyebrows?

This line derives from "In Ch'i-an, on a Chance Theme"; by Tu Mu (803-52), p. 135

I Ch'i-an, on a Chance Theme

(First of two)

The setting sun is two rods high on the bridge over the

brook,

Light floss of mist curls half way up from the shadows

of the willows.
So many green lotus-stalks lean on each other in yearning!

....For an instant they turn their heads to the West

wind behind them.

[The lotuses, like the poet, look toward the sunset and Ch'ang-an.]

No direct source for this line. Perhaps Waters created it with several lines in mind - on p. 75, we find "Back from a walk, I lie under the front eaves", and on p. 151: "Two swallows in the rafters hear the long sigh."

Poet: Han Yu

Evening: for Chang Chi and Chou K'uang

The sunlight thins, the view empties:
Back from a walk, I lie under the front eaves.
Fairweather clouds like torn fluff
And the new moon like a whetted sickle.
A zest for the fields and moors stirs in me,

The ambition for robes of office has long since turned

to loathing.
While I live, shall I take your hand again
Sighing that our years will soon be done?

Poet: Li Shang-Yin

(vii)
Where is it, the sad lyre which follows the quick flute?

Down endless lanes where the cherries flower, on a bank

where the willows droop.
The lady of the East house grows old without a husband,

The white sun at high noon, the last spring month half

over.

Princess Li-yang is fourteen,

In the cool of the day, after the Rain Feast, with him
behind the fence, look.
....Come home, toss and turn till the fifth watch.
Two swallows in the rafters hear the long sigh.

This line, while emotionally in tune with several of the poems, doesn't seem to be in the book. Of course, mountains figure frequently in the poems, and watchmen appear from time to time too.

I have no idea where this line comes from. It's not to be found in the book.

Taken from another untitled Li Shang-Yin poem, p. 146. Interestingly enough, Roger changed "ashes" to "shadow", which perhaps led him to create the line which follows it, "love is the shadow that ripens the wine".

The east wind sighs, the fine rains come:
Beyond the pool of water-lilies, the noise of faint thunder.
A gold toad gnaws the lock. Open it, burn the incense.
A tiger of jade pulls the rope. Draw from the well and escape.
Chia's daughter peeped through the screen when Han the clerk was young,
The goddess of River left her pillow for the great Prince of Wei.
Never let your heart open with the spring flowers:
One inch of loves is an inch of ashes.

a line that, as far as I can tell, isn't in the book. There are many mentions of "wine", though.

These lines derive from the last line of "Don't Go Out of the Door" by Li Ho (791-817): "Witness the man who raved at the wall as he wrote his questions to heaven", the man being a certain Ch'u Yuan. "Questions to Heaven" was one his books.

Why not call them 'Questions to Heaven'? Heaven is too august to be questioned, so he called them 'Heavenly Questions'. Ch'u Yuan in exile, his anxious heart wasted with cares, roamed among the mountains and marshes, crossed over the hills and plains, crying aloud to the Most High, and sighing as he looked up at heaven. He saw in Ch'u the shrines of the former kings and the ancestral halls of the nobles, painted with pictures of heaven and earth, mountains and rivers, gods and spirits, jewels and monsters, and the wonders and the deeds of ancient sages. When he tired of wandering among them he rested beneath them; and he took the pictures which he saw above him as themes for writing on the walls his raving questions.

(From the preface to the Heavenly Questions in the Songs of Ch'u)

I plucked the autumn orchid to adorn my girdle.

(Ch'u Yuan, Encountering Sorrows)

Heaven is inscrutable,
Earth keeps its secrets.
The nine-headed monsters eat our souls,
Frosts and snows snap our bones.
Dogs are set on us, snarl and sniff around us,
And lick their paws, partial to the orchid-girdled,

Till the end of all afflictions, when God sends us his

chariot,

And the sword starred with jewels and the yoke of

yellow gold.

I straddle my horse but there is no way back,

On the lake which swamped Li-yang the waves are huge

as mountains,

Deadly dragons stare at me, jostle the rings on the

bridle,
Lions and chimaeras spit from slavering mouths.

Pao Chiao slept all his life in the parted ferns,
Yen Hui before thirty was flecked at the temples,
Not that Yen Hui had weak blood
Nor that Pao Chiao had offended Heaven:

Heaven dreaded the time when teeth would close and

rend them.
For this and this cause only made it so.
Plain though it is, I fear that still you doubt me.

Witness the man who raved at the wall as he wrote his

questions to Heaven.

Not in the book. Perhaps Waters created it with the "Questions to Heaven" in mind.

Not to be found in the book. Many Chinese poems end with a question; maybe Waters decided to write his own Chinese-flavoured conclusion.

So what are we to make of those lines that aren't in the book? There are several alternatives: 1) Roger used another source. 2) The lines escaped me and are in fact lurking somewhere in the book (not very likely - it's only 171 pages, and I've been through them a few times). 3) They are Roger's own poetic creations. This last option seems the most likely one to me, especially seeing that Waters didn't slavishly follow the source book - most lines are altered in some way.

Anyway, I think this discovery settles some lyrical disputes: it's "yearning" rather than "union", "one inch" rather than "knowledge", "witness" rather than "who is", "raves" rather than "waves" or "arrives", "to heaven" rather than "by asking". Is it "counting" or "countless"? I don't know.

I found something else too: the Li Ho poem "On the Frontier" includes the line "On the Great Wall, a thousand miles of moonlight". It seems that Roger borrowed the words "a thousand miles of moonlight" for Cirrus Minor. And one poem by Lu T'ung is called "The Eclipse of the Moon". Sounds familiar, doesn't it? :)

If anyone is interested in reading a poem in full to get the context of the lines, contact me in private and I'll transcribe it for you.

Johan

Cirrus Minor
Roger Waters

In a churchyard by a river
Lazing in the haze of midday
Laughing in the grasses and the graze
Yellow bird you are not lone in singing and in flying on
In laughing and in leaving

Willow weeping in the water
Waving to the river daughters
Swaying in the ripples and the reeds
On a trip to Cirrus Minor, saw a crater in the sun
A thousand miles of moonlight later

Poet: Li Ho
On the Frontier

A Tartar horn tugs at the north wind,
Thistle Gate shines whiter than the stream.
The sky swallows the road to Kokonor.
On the Great Wall, a thousand miles of moonlight.

The dew comes down, the banners drizzle,
Cold bronze rings the watches of the night.
The nomads' armour meshes serpents' scales.
Horses neigh, Evergreen Mound's champed white.

In the still of autumn see the Pleiades.
Far out on the sands, danger in the furze.

North of their tents is surely the sky's end.
Where the sound of the river streams beyond the border.

['Evergreen Mound': tomb of Wang Chao-chun, concubine of the Emperor Yuan of Han (48-33 B.C.), who gave her as wife to a Tartar Khan; the grass always grew on her tomb. 'Pleiades': their flickering was an omen of nomad invasion.]