Let me finish that for you
[In his youth the poet Li Bai worked for a county magistrate.]
From time to time the magistrate would throw out a couple of lines of poetry himself to show off his own skill and to test Li Bai further. Once, observing a brushfire rage on the ridge of a hill, the magistrate let out these lines:
After the wildfire passed the hill / People have returned but the fire continues
At this he stopped, unable to proceed beyond such a clunky start. To save his superior’s face, Bai stepped in, chanting,
The flames are receding with the scarlet sun / While the mountain is wavering with the evening clouds.
Instead of appreciating the assist, however, his boss merely felt annoyed, outshone by Bai in front of his inferiors. Li Bai was irritated by this incident as well, because it showed that the magistrate didn’t care about the farmwork—and people’s livelihood—that had been disrupted by the fire.
On another day, his boss led a group of underlings to the riverside to check a flood condition, which could present a danger to crops and villages. A corpse appeared in the water, bobbing to the surface. It was the body of a young woman. Unmoved by the pitiful sight, the magistrate smiled and recited these lines:
Whose daughter is this sixteen-year-old? / She has been floating along the reedy bank. / Birds observe the jade above her brows / While fish touch her rouged lips.
Again he stopped, unable to continue. His callousness was too much for Li Bai to stomach, so Bai retorted,
Her glossy hair is scattered among the waves / And the red of her cheeks has disappeared in the flood. / When will she find a righteous judge / To voice all her grievances?
Again the magistrate took offense, but Li Bai was too upset to care and strode away. Soon afterward he quit his job, which he realized had become intolerable.