For Li Po by Tu Fu

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?

translated  by David Hinton

Ch’en-t’ao Lament by Tu Fu

Now fine homes in ten prefectures have dead sons
making water with their blood on Ch’en-t’ao Marsh.

An early winter’s panoramic waste: crystal sky,
the silence of war. Forty thousand dead in a day.

Mongol battalions return. Their arrows bathed blood-
black, drunk in the markets, they sing Mongol songs.

And we face north to mourn, another day conjuring
our army’s appearance passing into hopeful night.

translated by David Hinton

what’s left

you tossed back
your long hair
straightened
your shoulders
and said
later
what’s left is
your scent
lingering
in the air
your smile
etched
in my mind
your promise
engraved
on my heart

K’uei-chou by Tu Fu

Above K’uei-chou’s wall, a cloud-form village. Below:
wind-tossed sheets of falling rain, a swollen river

Thrashing in the gorge. Thunder and lightning battle.
Kingfisher-gray trees and ashen ivy shroud sun and moon.

War horses can’t compare to those back in quiet pastures.
But of a thousand homes, a bare hundred remain. Ai–

Ai–the widow beaten by life’s toll, grief-torn,
Sobbing in what village where on the autumn plain?

translated by DAvid Hinton

On the Wall-Tower above K’uei-chou at Night, Thinking of Tu Fu by Lu Yu

Done advising emperors, hair white–no one cared about
old Tu Fu, his life scattered away across rivers of the west,

chanting poems. He stood on this tower once, and now he’s
gone. Waves churn the same isolate moon. Inexhaustible

through all antiquity, this world’s great dramas just rise
and sink away. Simpleton and sage alike return in due time.

All these ice-cold thoughts, who’ll I share them with now?
In depths of night, gulls and egrets lift off sand into flight.

translated by David Hinton