I am only an old woodsman, whispering a sob,
As I steal like a spring-shadow down the Winding River.
...Since the palaces ashore are sealed by a thousand gates --
Fine willows, new rushes, for whom are you so green?
...I remember a cloud of flags that came from the South Garden,
And ten thousand colours, heightening one another,
And the Kingdom's first Lady, from the Palace of the Bright Sun,
Attendant on the Emperor in his royal chariot,
And the horsemen before them, each with bow and arrows,
And the snowy horses, champing at bits of yellow gold,
And an archer, breast skyward, shooting through the clouds
And felling with one dart a pair of flying birds.
...Where are those perfect eyes, where are those pearly teeth?
A blood-stained spirit has no home, has nowhere to return.
And clear Wei waters running east, through the cleft on Dagger- Tower Trail,
Carry neither there nor here any news of her.
People, compassionate, are wishing with tears
That she were as eternal as the river and the flowers.
...Mounted Tartars, in the yellow twilight, cloud the town with dust.
I am fleeing south, but I linger-gazing northward toward the throne.
Original Poem:
「宿府」
杜甫
清秋幕府井梧寒， 独宿江城蜡炬残。
永夜角声悲自语， 中天月色好谁看？
风尘荏苒音书绝， 关塞萧条行陆难。
已忍伶俜十年事， 强移栖息一枝安。
Interpretation:
In 764 A.D., Du Fu was being ostracized and counted on in various ways, which made him very troubled, and thus this poem reveals his unspeakable worries and inner world of loneliness and distress.
The first line points out that the time of the year is “clear autumn”, the place is in the “curtain house” of the minister, and the environment is lonely. In the second line, he writes that in such a cold environment, the poet “sleeps alone” in the palace, unable to go to bed at night, watching the candles burn out. Because Du Fu’s family lives outside the city Cao Tang, far away from the city, the work in the Curtain House is completed, it is inconvenient to return home, had to stay in the Curtain House, so the inner loneliness and loneliness.
Poet in the sleepless hear is the sound of the long night horn, as if in the sad complaint of the bleakness of the chaotic world, see is the middle of the sky moon color is pretty, but who appreciate her? Highlighted the curtain in no one to talk to, the heart is very depressed and sad.
Then write the poet in the lonesome, a thousand thoughts, think of the passage of time, the war for many years, all the younger brothers, cut off, I do not know the life and death of the book; their own exile outside of the pass, the pass is blocked by the mountains, the depression of the road is dangerous, to go home is really difficult ah!
Full of heavy heart, the poet says that he has endured ten years of loneliness and misery since the An Shi Rebellion, and now he is reluctantly invited by Yan Wu to serve as a staff member.
The whole poem to “sleep alone” of the scene lyric “sleep alone” of the feelings, physical scenery bleak, feelings bleak, in the repressed staccato rhyme, full of melancholy feeling of misery.
Poem translator:
Kiang Kanghu
About the poet:
Du Fu (杜甫), 712 – 770 AD, was a great poet of the Tang Dynasty, known as the “Sage of Poetry”. Born into a declining bureaucratic family, Du Fu had a rough life, and his turbulent and dislocated life made him keenly aware of the plight of the masses. Therefore, his poems were always closely related to the current affairs, reflecting the social life of that era in a more comprehensive way, with profound thoughts and a broad realm. In his poetic art, he was able to combine many styles, forming a unique style of “profound and thick”, and becoming a great realist poet in the history of China.
