Read The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry Online
Authors: Tony Barnstone
Du Fu was born to a prominent but declining family of scholar-officials, perhaps from modern-day Henan province, though he referred to himself as a native of Duling, the ancestral home of the Du clan. In the Six Dynasties Period his ancestors were in the service of the Southern courts; his grandfather Du Shenyan was an important poet of the early Tang dynasty, and a more remote ancestor, Du Yu (222–284), was a famed Confu-cianist and military man. In spite of family connections, however, Du Fu had difficulty achieving patronage and governmental postings and twice failed the imperial examinations, in 735 and 747. He was a restless traveler, and the poems of this early period show him to be a young man given to revelry, military and hunting arts, painting, and music. In 744 he met Li Bai, forming the
basis for one of the world's most famed literary friendships; the two poets devote a number of poems to each other. In 751 Du Fu passed a special examination that he finagled through submitting rhyme prose works directly to the emperor, but it wasn't until 755 that he was offered a post—a rather humiliating one in the provinces—which he rejected, accepting instead the patronage of the heir apparent. In the winter of that year, however, the An Lushan Rebellion broke out, and the emperor fled to Sichuan and abdicated, and the heir apparent became the new emperor in Gansu province. Meanwhile, the rebels seized the capital, and Du Fu, attempting to join the new emperor in the distant northwest, was captured by the rebels. He was detained for a year but managed to escape and, after traveling in disguise through the occupied territory, joined the emperor's court in the position of Reminder. He was arrested soon after for his outspokenness in defending a friend, a general who had failed to win a battle, but was pardoned and exiled to a low posting in Huazhou. He quit his job there and moved to Chengdu, where he and his family depended upon the kindness of friends and relatives and moved again and again to avoid banditry and rebellions. In spite of this instability, Du Fu's poems show a serenity in this period, particularly from 760–762, when he lived in a “thatched hut” provided by a patron and friend named Yan Yu, who hired him in the years that followed as a military adviser. After Yan's death in 765, Du Fu left Chengdu and traveled down the Yangtze River, finding patrons and dreaming of a return to Changan, but being prevented by invasions from Tibet. He spent his final three years traveling on a boat, detained in sickness, and finally winding down to his death as he journeyed down the Yangtze, apparently accepting the withering away of his health and life.
Battles, sobbing, many new ghosts.
Just an old man, I sadly chant poems.
Into the thin evening, wild clouds dip.
On swirling wind, fast dancing snow.
A ladle idles by a drained cask of green wine.
Last embers redden the empty stove.
No news, the provinces are cut off.
With one finger I write in the air,
sorrow.
The empire is shattered but rivers and peaks remain.
Spring drowns the city in wild grass and trees.
A time so bad, even the flowers rain tears.
I hate this separation, yet birds startle my heart.
The signal fires have burned three months;
I'd give ten thousand gold coins for one letter.
I scratch my head and my white hair thins
till it can't even hold a pin.
Carts grumble and rattle
and horses whinny and neigh
as the conscripts pass, bows and quivers strapped to their waists.
Parents, wives, and children run to see them off
till dust clouds drown the bridge south of Changan.
Tugging at soldiers' clothes, they wail and throw themselves in the
way, their cries rising into the clouds.
On the roadside a passerby asks what's happening.
The soldiers only say, “We're called up often,
some went north at fifteen to guard the Yellow River
and still at forty are farming frontier settlements out West.
We left so young the village chief wrapped our turbans for us;
we came back white haired but now we're off to fortify the frontier!
The men there have shed a salt ocean of blood,
but the warlike emperor still lusts for empire.
My lord, haven't you heard how in two hundred districts east of China's mountains countless villages grow just weeds and thorns?
Even if a stout wife tries to plow and hoe,
east to west the crops grow wild over broken terraces.
The Qin soldiers are fierce warriors,
but they are driven forth to battle like chickens or dogs.
You, sir, can ask questions
but conscripts don't dare complain.
This winter, for example,
they haven't released the Guanxi troops
but officials still press for the land tax.
Land taxes! How are we to pay that?
The truth is it's a sour thing to have sons.
Better to have a daughter—
at least she can marry a neighbor.
Our sons lie unburied in the grass.
My lord, have you seen the Blue Sea's shore
where the old white bones lie ungathered?
New ghosts keen and old ghosts weep
jiu, jiu
like twittering birds as rain sifts from the bleak sky.”
In Fuzhou tonight there's a moon
my wife can only watch alone.
Far off, I brood over my small children
who don't even remember Changan.
Her satin hair dampens in fragrant mist,
jade arms chilled by clear moonlight.
When will we lean together between empty curtains,
beaming as tear tracks dry on our faces?
Curfew drums cut off a traveler's road.
At the border, autumn comes with a wild goose's shriek.
From this night on, dew will whiten to frost.
The moon looks brighter at home.
My brothers are scattered now.
Who can tell me if they live or die?
I send letters but no word arrives,
and the war goes on and on.
River so blue the birds seem to whiten.
On the green mountainside flowers almost flame.
Spring is dying yet again.
Will I ever go home?
Slender wind shifts the shore's fine grass.
Lonely night below the boat's tall mast.
Stars hang low as the vast plain splays;
the swaying moon makes the great river race.
How can poems make me known?
I'm old and sick, my career done.
Drifting, just drifting. What kind of man am I?
A lone gull floating between earth and sky.
I remember I had a child heart at fifteen,
healthy as a brown calf running wild.
In August, when pears and dates ripened in the courtyard
I'd climb the trees a thousand times a day.
All at once I am fifty,
and I sit and lie around more than I walk or stand.
I force smiles and small talk to please my patrons,
but a hundred worries tangle my emotions.
Coming home to the same four empty walls,
I see this grief mirrored in my old wife's glance.
My sons don't treat their father with respect.
They greet me by the door with angry screams for rice.
A bird of prey above the sky
and two white gulls over the river
gliding on wind. A good time to attack,
while they roam about relaxed.
The grasses are balled with dew
and the spiderweb is not yet closed.
Heaven's secret plan is like human designs.
I stand alone with a thousand worries.
In this life we never meet,
orbiting far like polar stars,
so what evening is this
where I can share your candlelight?
Youth is just a few slim hours,
and now our hair and sideburns are gray.
Last time I came, half our old friends were ghosts.
I moaned in shock, my guts on fire.
How could I know that after twenty years
I'd enter your hall again?
When we parted you were unmarried.
Now your sons and daughters form a line,
sweetly show respect for their father's friend
and ask me where I'm from.
With their questions still flying,
you send them for wine and plates,
for spring chives fresh cut in the evening rain
and rice steamed in with yellow millet.
“How hard it is for us to meet!” you cry,
and one toast grows to ten.
After ten cups I'm still not drunk,
just warmed by our old friendship.
Tomorrow mountains will come between us,
and we'll be lost in the world like mist.
I've swallowed sobs for the lost dead,
but this live separation is chronic grief.
From the malarial south of the river
no news comes of the exiled traveler,
but you visit my dream, old friend,
knowing I ache for you.
Are you are a ghost?
No way to tell with the long road between us.
Your spirit comes through green maple woods,
slips home past darkening border fortresses.
You are caught in the law's net,
so how can your spirit have wings?
The sinking moon pours onto the rafters
and your face glows in my mind.
The water is deep, the waves are wide.
Don't let the dragons snatch you!
Wind and frost swirl from white silk:
a painting of a great black hawk,
shoulders braced as he hunts hares,
glancing sidelong with a barbarian glare.
Grasp the gleaming leash and collar,
whistle him down from his bar,
and he'll strike common birds,
spattering the plain with feathers and blood.
Narrow rays from the first slice of moon
slant from the trembling edge of the dark orb
which barely crests the ancient fortress
wallowing in the surf of evening clouds.
The river of stars is one eternal color.
Empty cold pours through the mountain pass.
The front courtyard is white dew
and chrysanthemums secretly drenched with dark.
The good rain knows when to fall.
It comes when spring blossoms.
It steals in on the wind, submerged in night,
moistening all things gently without sound.
Black wilderness, black paths, black clouds;
only a torch on a riverboat sparks.
At dawn I see all things red and wet,
and flowers drown the City of Brocade.
1
Under my feet the moon
Glides along the river.
Near midnight, a gusty lantern
Shines in the heart of night.
Along the sandbars flocks
Of white egrets roost,
Each one clenched like a fist.
In the wake of my barge
The fish leap, cut the water,
And dive and splash.
Translated by Kenneth Rexroth
The clear river curves to embrace the village.
Everything is relaxed here in long summer.
Swallows come and go as they like in the hall,
gulls are necking in the water.
My old wife is drawing a Go board on paper,
my little son is hammering a needle into a fishhook.
As long as old friends give me daily supplies,
what else could my humble body desire?
How is Mountain Tai?
Its green is seen beyond State Qi and State Lu,
a distillation of creation's spirit and beauty.
Its slopes split day into yin and yang.
Its rising clouds billow in my chest.
Homecoming birds fly through my wide-open eyes.
I should climb to the summit
and in one glance see all other mountains dwarfed.
Red evening clouds are mountains in the west
and the sun's feet disappear under the horizon.
Sparrows noisy over the brushwood door;
I am a traveler home after a thousand miles.
My wife and children are startled to see me alive.
The surprise ends but they can't stop wiping tears.
In the chaotic world I was tossed about;
I've found my way home, alive by accident.
Neighbors crowd over our garden walls.
They are moved, sighing and even weeping.
In deep night we hold candles,
facing each other as if in dream.
I live my late years as if I've stolen my life.
Very few joys after I returned home.
My little son never lets go of my knees,
afraid I will go away again.
I remember I liked to chase cool shade,
so I walk under trees by the pond.
Whistling, the north wind is strong,
I finger past events and a hundred worries fry in my mind.
At least the crops are harvested,
wine spurts from the mouth of the flask
and I have enough to fill my cups
and console me in my dusk.
A clutter of chickens makes chaos,
fighting each other as guests arrive.
I drive them up bushes and trees,
then hear knocking on my brushwood gate:
four or five village elders greet me
and ask about my long absence.
Each of them brings a gift in hand.
Their wines pour out, some clear, some muddy.
They apologize for their wine, so watery,
as there was no one to grow millet.
Weapons and horses can't rest yet;
the young men are gone on the expedition east.
I offer a song for my old village folks,
feeling deep gratitude.
After singing, I sigh and throw back my head
and tears meander down our faces.
The stream swirls. The wind moans in
The pines. Gray rats scurry over
Broken tiles. What prince, long ago,
Built this palace, standing in
Ruins beside the cliffs? There are
Green ghost fires in the black rooms.
The shattered pavements are all
Washed away. Ten thousand organ
Pipes whistle and roar. The storm
Scatters the red autumn leaves.
His dancing girls are yellow dust.
Their painted checks have crumbled
Away. His gold chariots
And courtiers are gone.
Only A stone horse is left of his
Glory. I sit on the grass and
Start a poem, but the pathos of
It overcomes me. The future
Slips imperceptibly away.
Who can say what the years will bring?
Translated by Kenneth Rexroth
Chinese vines climb up low hemp plants;
the tendrils cannot stretch very far.
To marry a daughter to a drafted man
is worse than abandoning her by the roadside.
“I just did my hair up as a married woman,
haven't even had time to warm the bed for you.
Marry in the evening and depart in the morning
—isn't that too hurried!
You are not going very far,
just to guard the borders at Heyang,
but my status in the family is not yet official.
How can I greet my parents-in-law?
When my parents brought me up,
they kept me in my room day and night.
When a daughter is married,
she has to stay even if she's wed to a chicken or dog.
Now you are going to the place of death.
A heavy pain cramps my stomach.
I was determined to follow you wherever you went,
then realized that was not proper.
Please don't be hampered by our new marriage;
try to be a good soldier.
When women get mixed up in an army,
I fear, the soldiers' morale will falter.
I sigh, since I'm from a poor family
and it took so long to sew this silk dress.
I will never put this dress on again,
and I'm going to wash off my makeup while you watch.
Look at those birds flying up in the sky,
big or small they stay in pairs,
but human life is full of mistakes and setbacks.
I will forever wait for your return.”