by Tu Fu
A little more, a little less—I’m sick of drug-cakes.
The courtyard miserably unswept—I bow
To a guest, clutching my goosefoot cane. Our
Son copies my idylls on bamboo they praise.
By November, the river steady and smooth again,
A light boat will carry me anywhere I please.
8th MONTH, 17th NIGHT: FACING THE MOON
The autumn moon is still full tonight.
In a river village, a lone old wanderer
Raising the blinds, I return to moonlight.
As I struggle with a cane, it follows.
And bright enough to rouse hidden dragons,
It scatters roosting birds from trees. All
Around my thatched study, orange groves
Shine: clear dew aching with fresh light.
DAWN
The last watch has sounded in K’uei-chou.
Colors spreading above Yang-t’ai Mountain,
A cold sun clears high peaks. Clouds linger,
Nestled among mountain valleys, and deep
Yangtze banks keep sails hidden. Beneath
Clear skies: the clatter of falling leaves.
And deer at my bramble gate—so close
Here, we touch our own kind in each other.
DAY’S END
Oxen and sheep were brought back down
Long ago, and bramble gates closed. Over
Mountains and rivers, far from my old garden,
A windswept moon rises into clear night.
Springs trickle down dark cliffs, and autumn
Dew fills ridgeline grasses. My hair seems
Whiter in lamplight. The flame flickers
Good fortune over and over—and for what?
9th MONTH, 1st DAY: VISITING MENG SHIH-ERH
AND HIS BROTHER MENG SHIH-SZU
I invade cold dew on a cane, thatch houses
Trailing smoke out into dawn light. Old,
Frail, dozing among scattered books my limit
Now, I rest often against roadside trees.
Autumn passes. What once drove me ends.
Nothing but your friendship could bring me
Here. Sipping thick wine with you, our small
Talk crystal clear, I forget the years lost.
REPLY TO A LETTER FROM MENG SHIH-ERH
Loss and ruin ended, at peace far from
Lo-yang hills, I ponder the question cloud
Hidden peaks pose. I wouldn’t leave this
Home deep among bramble. Yellow leaves
Tumble in north winds. Southern streams
Exact white-hair laments. Ten years
A guest of lakes and rivers—boundless,
My heart of lingering dusk grows boundless.
ON A TOWER
Skies bottomless, howling gibbons moan in gusting wind.
Birds scatter from clear shallows and white sand—birds
Return. Leaves from wind-torn trees fall boundlessly away,
And the Yangtze, one headlong crash, arrives without end.
Too long wandering autumn’s ten-thousand-mile grief, enough
Illness already to fill a century and more, I climb this tower
To stand alone—temples bleached with trouble and worry,
Defeated…. And here I’ve just sworn off that blessèd wine.
AUTUMN PASTORAL
1
Pastoral autumn grows ever more unearthly.
A cold river jostles blue space. My boat
Tethered to Well Rope, aboriginal star,
I sited my house in Ch’u village wilderness.
There are workers here to pick ripe dates.
But I hoe these plots of sunflower wreckage
Myself. And dinners, the food of old men
Now, I share out mid-stream to the fish.
2
This gossamer life obeys an evident
Nature. Nothing turns away easily:
Fish are happiest in deep water, birds
At home in thick woods. Feeble, old,
I’m content sick and poor. Earth’s
Pageant flares good and bad together.
Autumn wind blows. I totter about,
Never tired of North Mountain’s ferns.
3
Music and rites to perfect imperfection.
Mountains and forests for long, steady
Happiness…. Gauze cap askew, I sun
My back against radiant bamboo books.
I gather windfallen pinecones, cut sky-
Chilled honeycomb open. In clogs,
I pause at sparse flecks of red and blue,
Bending toward their faint fragrance.
4
Autumn sand is white on the far bank, late
Light across mountains red. As waves
Recoil from the scales of something hidden,
Birds gather high in the wind to return.
Fulling-stones echo from every home. Axe
Strokes blend together. And soon, Ch’ing-nü
Arrives—frost drifting down, a quilt
Gift coming between me and Southern Palace.
5
I wasted my life on Unicorn portraits. Now,
Peopled with ducks and egrets, the year
Crumbles. Autumn has swollen the vast river.
Empty gorges become night’s wealth of sound.
Paths lost among thousands of stacked stones,
Our sail lingers on—one flake of cloud.
Though well-versed in tribal speech, appointments
Advising lords are no certainty for my sons.
ASKING OF WU LANG AGAIN
Couldn’t we let her filch dates from your garden?
She’s a neighbor. Childless and without food,
Alone—only desperation could bring her to this.
We must be gentle, if only to ease her shame.
People from far away frighten her. She knows us
Now—a fence would be too harsh. Tax collectors
Hound her, she told me, keeping her bone poor….
How quickly thoughts of war become falling tears.
GONE DEAF
Grown old as Ho Kuan Tzu, a hermit
Lamenting this world, like Lu P’i Weng,
How long before my sight also dims away?
For over a month now, deaf as dragons:
No autumn tears follow a gibbon’s cry,
And no old-age grief a sparrow’s chitter.
Mountain yellows fall. Startled, I call
Out to my son Are there northern winds?
RAIN
Roads not yet glistening, rain slight,
Broken clouds darken after thinning away.
Where they drift, purple cliffs blacken.
And beyond white birds blaze in flight.
Sounds of cold-river rain grown familiar,
Autumn sun casts moist shadows. Below
Our brushwood gate, out to dry at the village
Mill: hulled rice, half-wet and fragrant.
FACING NIGHT
In farmlands outside a lone city, our
River village sits among headlong waters.
Deep mountains hurry brief winter light
Here. Tall trees calming bottomless wind,
Cranes glide in to misty shallows. Sharing
Our thatch roof, hens settle in. Tonight,
Lamplight scattered across koto and books
All night long, I can see through my death.
NIGHT
1
A crescent moon lulls in clear night.
Half-way into sleep, lampwicks char.
Deer wander, uneasy among howling peaks,
And falling leaves startle cicadas.
For a moment, I remember the east coast:
Mince treats, a boat out in falling snow….
Tribal songs rifle the stars. Here,
At the edge of heaven, I inhabit my absence.
2
Flutes mourn on the city wall. Dus
k:
The last birds cross our village graveyard.
And after decades of battle, their war-tax
Taken, people return in deepening night.
Trees darken against cliffs. Leaves fall.
The river of stars faintly skirting beyond
Borderlands, I gaze at a tilting Dipper,
A thin moon—and magpies finish with flight.
THOUGHTS
1
Throughout Heaven and Earth, whatever lives
contends. Each place has its own way,
but we all struggle inchmeal, one with another,
tangling ourselves ever tighter in the snare.
Without aristocracy, what would the lowly
grieve for? And without wealth, what could
poverty lack? O, neighborhoods may take turns
mourning, but all time is one lone corpse.
Here, in Wu Gorge, I have lived three unkempt
years out like a fluttering candle, blessed that
after a lifetime growing content with failure,
I’ve forgotten how splendor and disgrace differ.
Chosen for court or grown old in some outland,
I need the same workaday rice. But here, my
house of woven bramble east of city walls, I can
pick healing herbs in shaded mountain valleys.
Searching out roots beneath frost and snow,
I wear my heart away without thinking of lush
branches and vines. It isn’t discipline—
this quiet life apart has always been my joy.
They say a sage is taut as a bowstring and
a fool is bent hookwise. Who knows which
I am? Taut hookwise, warming my old back
here in the sun, I await woodcutters and herdsmen.
2
I sit on our south porch in deep night,
moonlight incandescent on my knees. Sudden
winds capsizing the vast river of stars,
sunlight clears the rooftops. Things wild
wake in herds and flocks. Well-rested,
they set out with their own kind. And I,
too, hurry my kids along to scratch out
our living with the same selfish industry.
Passersby are rare under these cold, year
end skies. Days and months grow short.
Obsessed with the scramble for glory, we
people have made bedlam lice of ourselves.
Before three emperors hatched civilization,
people ate their fill and were content.
Someone started knotting ropes, and now we’re
mired in the glue and varnish of government.
Sui, inventor of fire, was the mastermind.
The catastrophe continued with Tung’s edifying
histories. Everyone knows that if you light
candles and lamps, moths gather in swarms.
Sent beyond the eight horizons, the spirit
finds nothing above or below but isolate
emptiness. Departure and return: all
one motion, one timeless way of absence.
RETURNING LATE
After midnight, eluding tigers on the road, I return
home below dark mountains. My family asleep inside,
the Northern Dipper drifts nearby, sinking low
over the river. Venus blaze—huge in empty space.
Holding a candle in the courtyard, I call for two
torches. A gibbon in the gorge, startled, shrieks once.
Old and tired, my hair white, I dance and sing out.
Goosefoot cane, no sleep…. Catch me if you can!
LAST POEMS
THOUGHTS, TRAVELING AT NIGHT
In delicate beach-grass, a slight breeze.
The boat’s mast teetering up into solitary
Night, plains open away beneath foundering stars.
A moon emerges and, the river vast, flows.
How will poems bring honor? My career
Lost to age and sickness, buffeted, adrift
On the wind—is there anything like it? All
Heaven and earth, and one lone sand-gull.
RIVERSIDE MOON AND STARS
The sudden storm leaves a clear, autumnal
Night and Jade String radiant in gold waves.
Celestial River a timeless white, clarity
Claims Yangtze shallows anew. Strung Pearls
Snaps, scattering shimmering reflections.
A mirror lofts into blank space. Of remnant
Light, the clepsydra’s lingering drop,
What remains with frost seizing blossoms?
OPPOSITE A POST-STATION, THE BOAT
MOONLIT BESIDE A MONASTERY
My boat mirroring a clear, bright moon
Deep in the night, I leave lanterns unlit.
A gold monastery stands beyond green maples
Here, a red post-tower beside white water.
Faint, drifting from the city, a crow’s cry
Fades. Full of wild grace, egrets sleep.
Hair white, a guest of lakes and rivers,
I tie blinds open and sit alone, sleepless.
CHIANG-HAN
Traveling Chiang-han, lone savant spent
Between Heaven and Earth, I dream return.
A flake of cloud sky’s distance, night
Remains timeless in the moon’s solitude.
My heart grows strong still at dusk.
In autumn wind, I am nearly healed. Long ago,
Old horses were given refuge, not sent out.
The long road is not all they’re good for.
FAR CORNERS OF EARTH
Chiang-han mountains looming, impassable,
A cloud drifts over this far corner of earth.
Year after year, nothing familiar, nothing
Anywhere but one further end of the road.
Here, Wang Ts’an found loss and confusion,
And Ch’ü Yüan cold grief. My heart already
Broken in quiet times—and look at me,
Each day wandering a new waste of highway.
LEAVING KUNG-AN AT DAWN
Again, in town to the north, a watchman’s final
Clapper falls silent. Venus impetuous in the east,
Neighborhood roosters repeat yesterday’s pastoral dirge.
How long can life’s familiar sights and sounds endure?
My oar-strokes hushed, I leave for rivers and lakes,
Distances without promise. I step out the gate, look
Away—and suddenly, all trace has vanished. These
Drug-cakes shoring me up—they alone stay with me.
DEEP WINTER
Heaven’s design blossoms and leafs out,
Stone roots bind rivers and streams: clouds
Mirroring glimmers of dawn shadow, each
Cold current traces its scar. Yang Chu’s
Tears come easily here. Ch’ü Yüan’s wandering
Soul cannot be summoned. As wind and
Billowing waves load the teetering dusk, we
Abandon oars for a night in whose home?
SONG AT YEAR’S END
The year ends thus: northern winds, white snow
shrouding Tung-t’ing Lake and all Hsiao and Hsiang.
Under cold skies, as fishermen tend frozen nets, Mo-yao
tribesmen shoot geese. Their mulberry bows go twang.
But Ch’u people like fish, not birds. Let the geese
keep flying south—killing them here is pointless.
Rice was expensive last year. Soldiers starved.
This year, falling prices have ravaged our farmers.
And as officials ride high, stuffed with wine and meat,
the looms in these fleeced straw huts stand empty.
I hear even children are sold now, that it’s common
everywhere: love hacked and smothered to pay taxes.
Once, they jailed people for minting coins. But now,
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cutting green copper with iron and lead is approved.
Engraved mud would be easier. Good and bad are surely
not the same, but they’ve long been blended together.
From the walls of ten-thousand kingdoms, painted
horns moan: such sad anthems, will they never stop?
ON YO-YANG TOWER
Having long heard about Tung-t’ing Lake,
At last I climb Yo-yang Tower. Wu and Ch’u
Spread away east and south. All
Heaven and Earth, day and night adrift,
Wavers. No word from those I love. Old.
Sick. Nothing but a lone boat. And
North of frontier passes—Tibetan horses….
I lean on the railing, and tears come.
OVERNIGHT AT WHITE-SAND POST-STATION
Another night on the water: last light,
Woodsmoke again, and then this station. Here
Beyond the lake, against the enduring white of
Shoreline sand, fresh green reeds. Occurrence,
Ch’i’s ten thousand forms of spring—among
All this, my lone raft is another Wandering Star.
Carried by waves, the moon’s light limitless,
I shade deep into pellucid southern darkness.
FACING SNOW
Northern snows overrun T’an-chou. Mongol
Storm clouds leave ten thousand homes cold.
Windblown with scattering leaves, the rain-
Smeared, flakeless snow falls. Though my
Gold-embroidered purse is empty, my credit
