The Selected Poems of Tu Fu Read online

  Vermont, January 1989 David Hinton

  My Thanks

  To Jody Gladding for advice during the revisions, support, and much more;

  To Eliot Weinberger for his help with the manuscript and his indispensable spirit;

  To J. P. Seaton for support and for reading the first draft;

  To New Directions and Peggy Fox, my editor;

  And, for financial assistance, to Cornell University, The Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, The Pacific Cultural Foundation, and The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

  No one knows your thoughts, master,

  And night is empty around us, silent.

  EARLY POEMS

  GAZING AT THE SACRED PEAK

  For all this, what is the mountain god like?

  An unending green of lands north and south:

  from ethereal beauty Creation distills

  there, yin and yang split dusk and dawn.

  Swelling clouds sweep by. Returning birds

  ruin my eyes vanishing. One day soon,

  at the summit, the other mountains will be

  small enough to hold, all in a single glance.

  VISITING FENG-HSIEN TEMPLE AT LUNG-MEN

  I leave the temple, but stay another

  night nearby. The dark valley all empty

  music, moonlight scatters lucid

  shadow among trees. Heaven’s Gap

  cradles planets and stars. I sleep

  among clouds—and stirring, my clothes

  cold, hear the first bell sound

  morning for those waking that deeply.

  WRITTEN ON THE WALL AT CHANG’S HERMITAGE

  In spring mountains, alone, I set out to find you.

  Axe strokes crack—crack and quit. Silence doubles.

  I pass snow and ice lingering along cold streams, then,

  Late light wavering at Stone Gate, enter these woods.

  Deer graze here each morning, for you harm nothing.

  And because you want nothing, auras of silver and gold

  Grace nights. Pacing you on a whim in bottomless dark, the way

  Here lost—I feel it drifting, this whole empty boat.

  THOUGHTS, FACING RAIN:

  I GO TO INVITE HSÜ IN

  Clouds summit above T’ai Mountain, peak

  And summit, serene as full-river voices

  In vacant space. Lightning skitters swallows

  On painted screens. Fish dip back below

  Steady rains, deepen and drift. When I

  Hear you outside, I am drinking cheap wine.

  Ashamed of mud, calling Bring your horse

  Right up to the porch here, I invite you in.

  FOR LI PO

  Autumn returns, and again we are cast thistledown together

  On the winds. The elixir of immortality has eluded us—

  Ko Hung must be ashamed. Days drunk and singing too loud,

  Given to the wind, yet resolute—so brave, and for whom?

  CH’ANG-AN I

  A LETTER FROM MY BROTHER AT LIN-YI ARRIVES

  LAMENTING RAINS AND FLOODING ON THE

  YELLOW RIVER. AS ASSISTANT MAGISTRATE, HE

  IS WORRIED ABOUT THE COLLAPSING DIKES, SO

  I SEND THIS POEM TO EASE HIS THOUGHTS

  The Dual Principles have ended in rain and wind,

  Billows and waves falling from a hundred

  Mountain valleys. I hear the river is broken

  Wide open and gathering every distance into one

  Cold rising sea. Lament seizes every district.

  Officials grow quiet with worry. And directing

  Defenses against the river, you are also

  Helpless. Your foot-long letter arrives, saying

  There isn’t time for new dikes. Enlisting

  Mu Wang’s turtles and crocodiles is impossible,

  And looking to magpies from the Celestial River

  Futile. South of Yen, farmlands are nothing

  Now but wind. Even Chi hills are no more

  Than sunken thistleweed. Waters thick with

  Clams and snails lap at city walls; hornless

  Dragons and dragons with scales roam every pool.

  Hsü Pass deep as any water god’s palace,

  Chieh-shih Mountain a mere tip of autumn hair,

  Nothing remains of peasant villages but a lone

  Tree and ten-thousand boats lost in azure sky.

  Adrift, slight as a flood-charm, I sail for peach

  Branches of immortality. There, at the edge of

  Heaven with my fishhook and line, surely

  I will land the P’eng-lai tortoise for you.

  SONG OF THE WAR-CARTS

  War-carts clatter and creak,

  horses stomp and splutter—

  each wearing quiver and bow, the war-bound men pass.

  Mothers and fathers, wives and children—they all flock

  alongside, farewell dust so thick Hsien-yang Bridge

  disappears. They get everywhere in the way, crying

  cries to break against heaven, tugging at war clothes.

  On the roadside, when a passerby asks war-bound men,

  war-bound men say simply: Our lots are drawn often.

  Taken north at fifteen, we guard the Yellow River. Taken

  west at forty, we man frontier camps. Village elders

  tied our head-cloths then. And now we return, our

  hair white, only to be sent out again to borderlands,

  lands where blood swells like sea-water. And Emperor Wu’s

  imperial dreams of conquest roll on. Haven’t you heard

  that east of the mountains, in our Han

  homeland, ten hundred towns and

  ten thousand villages are overrun by thorned weeds,

  that even though strong wives keep hoeing and plowing,

  you can’t tell where crops are and aren’t? It’s worst for

  mighty Ch’in warriors: the more bitter war they outlive,

  the more they are herded about like chickens and dogs.

  Though you are kind to ask, sir,

  how could we complain? Imagine

  this winter in Ch’in. Their men

  still haven’t returned, and those

  clerks are out demanding taxes.

  Taxes! How could they pay taxes?

  Even a son’s birth is tragic now.

  People prefer a daughter’s birth,

  a daughter’s birth might at least end in marriage nearby.

  But a son’s birth ends in an open grave who knows

  where. You haven’t seen how bones from ancient times

  lie, bleached and unclaimed along the shores of

  Sky-Blue Seas—how the weeping of old ghosts is

  joined by new voices, the gray sky by twittering rain.

  CROSSING THE BORDER

  1

  So far from my village—sent so far

  away to the Chiao River. Reporting

  dates are final, and nets of calamity tangle

  anyone who resists. Our lands are rich

  enough and more for a king, what good

  can a little more ground bring?

  Shouldering my spear, lost, parents’

  love lost—tasting silence, I go.

  2

  I left home long ago. Now, the early

  abuse is over. My bones a father’s love,

  my flesh a mother’s—how are they so

  broken in a son still alive to guess at

  his death (shaking free of its reins,

  a horse tearing blue silk from my hands, or

  after inching down a mountainside, eighty

  thousand feet, trying for a fallen flag)?

  3

  In a river of muted cries, I sharpen

  my sword, longing for the heart’s

  silence long laced with cries of stricken

  people. But the water bleeds, the edge

  cuts my hand. Once devoted to his

  countr
y, what has a good man to resent?

  Heroes live forever in Unicorn Pavilion,

  and the bones of war rot quickly away.

  4

  Always some clerk to scare-up men and

  send them out. The frontiers are well-

  supplied. Death certain as life,

  we advance. And still, officers rage.

  Meeting a friend on the road, I send

  letters home….O, how are we cast so

  far from one another, broken apart, never

  to scrape by in sorrow together again?

  5

  Distant, ten thousand miles and more

  distant, they take us to join vast armies.

  Soldiers come to joy and grief by chance,

  how could generals hear everything? Riders

  appear across the river. Then suddenly

  they arrive, ten hundred Mongol brigades.

  From this rankless beginning, how long

  until my reputation is made and confirmed?

  6

  In drawing bows, draw the strongest;

  in using arrows, use the longest.

  To shoot men, first shoot their horses;

  to take enemies, first take their generals.

  But killing must be kept within limits:

  a country is nothing without borders. Far

  beyond any claim of defense, what is ours

  now with all this slaughter and death?

  7

  Pushing our horses hard through mixed

  rain and snow, we enter high mountains.

  The trail narrows. Our fingers breaking

  through layers of ice, we hug frozen rock.

  So far from our Chinese moon,

  building walled forts—will we ever

  return? At dusk, clouds drift away

  south, clouds I cannot mount and ride.

  8

  The Mongols descend on our positions.

  For hundreds of miles, dust-filled

  winds darken skies. A few brave

  sword strokes drive armies before us.

  We capture their famed chieftain and

  present him, tied by the neck, when

  we return. Preparing to march, we stand

  in formation. One win—so much talk.

  9

  In ten years and more at war, how could I

  avoid all honor? People so treasure it,

  I thought of telling my story, but sounding

  like all the others would be too shameful.

  War flickers throughout our heartland

  and rages steadily along the frontiers.

  With such fine men chasing ambition

  everywhere, who can elude savage beggary?

  NEW YEAR’S EVE AT TU WEI’S HOME

  The songs over pepper wine have ended.

  Friends jubilant among friends, we start

  A stabled racket of horses. Lanterns

  Blaze, scattering crows. As dawn breaks,

  The fortieth year passes in my flight toward

  Evening light. Who can change it, who

  Stop it for even a single embrace—this dead

  Dazzling drunk in the wings of life we live?

  MEANDERING RIVER: THREE STANZAS, FIVE LINES EACH

  1

  Meandering River desolate, autumn skies deep—withered

  bits of blown lotus and chestnut drift. Lamenting this

  wanderer handed-down into old age is empty: White

  pebbles and shoreline sand also chafe back and forth.

  A wailing swan, alone, cries out in search of its kind.

  2

  Singing that which occurs, neither modern nor ancient,

  my rising song only breaks against bushes and trees.

  And those houses stand, in their lavish parade, countless.

  I welcome this heart of ash. Dear brother, dear little

  niece—why so hurt, why these tears falling like rain?

  3

  I have asked enough answers of heaven for one life.

  Enough, having hemp and mulberry fields there,

  to settle near South Mountain, in Tu-ling. Riding

  with Li Kuang, in simple clothes, I will end my

  failing years shooting phantom tigers as they appear.

  LI STOPS BY ON A SUMMER DAY

  In distant woods, summer heat thin,

  you stop by. It could be in a village

  somewhere, my little tumbledown

  house near the city’s south tower—

  neighbors open and simple-hearted,

  needs easily filled. Call across

  for wine, the family to the west

  gladly hands a pot over the fence,

  fresh, unstrained. We spread mats

  beside the stream. Clear winds arrive

  carelessly, and you imagine autumn

  stunning already. Everywhere, nesting

  birds bicker, thickening cicada songs

  fill lush leaves—who calls my home

  among this racket of things secluded?

  We linger out flawless, dusk-tinted

  blossoms on water—a world enough now,

  enough and more. And without worry,

  the winepot still far from empty, I go

  again with schemes aplenty for more.

  9/9, SENT TO TS’EN SHEN

  I step out for a moment, then back.

  Foundering rain-clouds haven’t changed;

  ditchwater babbles everywhere. Thinking

  of you, I grow thin. I mutter songs

  on the west porch. Meals pass indistinct

  as night and day. Meandering River a mere

  half-step away—and yet, meeting you

  there is impossible now…. How much

  more must earth’s simple people bear?

  Their farms are beyond hope. And if we

  scold the cloud-spirit, who will ever

  patch these leak-sprung heavens? O,

  sun and moon lost to a haze and waste

  world, twitter and howl. Noble men

  driven into twisted paths, simple-hearted

  people, frantic, run themselves ragged.

  Even the exalted South Mountain might

  already have sunk and drifted away.

  What is it for—here at my eastern fence,

  this holiday confusion of chrysanthemums?

  Your new poems? Our shared weakness

  for wine? Cut them—I’ll cut the yellow-

  bloomed things and fill my sleeves

  far too beautifully for nothing today.

  AUTUMN RAIN LAMENT

  Looming rain and reckless wind, an indiscriminate

  ruins of autumn. The four seas and eight horizons all

  gathered into one cloud—you can’t tell an ox coming

  from horse going, or the muddy Ching from clear Wei.

  Wheat-ears are sprouting on the stalk, and millet-

  clusters turn black. Nothing arrives from farmers,

  not even news. Here in the city, quilts bring

  one handful of rice. No one mentions old bargains.

  FENG-HSIEN RETURN CHANT

  An old man from Tu-ling unhinged a life

  in twisted thought and harlequin rags

  begging to rescue the times like any fool,

  as if he were Chi or Chieh. He will end

  empty as Hui Tzu’s huge, useless gourd.

  A white-haired man too willing to suffer,

  once my coffin is covered, this longing for

  what will suffice will end. And yet,

  it is poverty’s year. I mourn the people,

  my song brimmed with lament, to my aging

  schoolmates’ amusement—a held sigh

  and fever of the heart. Not that I haven’t

  a hermit’s love for rivers and seas,

  for a life wind scatters in vanishing

  days and months, but with a ruler rare as

  Yao or Shun, I couldn’t endure
that

  endless farewell. We have everything

  good government could possibly want now

  but good government. The sunflower

  cannot change what it is, it will always

  turn toward the sun. And the frenzied ant

  searching for its snug little burrow,

  how could it ever be a huge whale

  taking comfort in the boundless sea?

  It’s the nature of things. What a fool

  I’ve been, taking my concerns around on

  polite visits—so determined, so very

  willing to drown myself in this dust.

  Ch’ao and Yu refused to abandon their

  hermit’s discipline. In shame before them,

  drinking recklessly, I lose myself chanting

  songs to conjure broken sorrows away.

  The hundred grasses in tatters, high wind-

  scoured ridges and stars—it is year’s end

  on the imperial highway. Among shadows

  towering in the heart of night, I set out.

  Soon, fingers frostbitten, I can’t tie my coat

  closed when it falls open. Among peaks I pass

  in the bitter morning, on Li Mountain, our emperor

  sleeps soundly. Ch’ih Yu banners trail out

  into stars. In this cold, empty canyon passing

  armies have polished smooth, steam billows

  over his little Jasper Lake. Constellations

  chafe and jar against his imperial lances.

  Regal ministers were up late taking their