Westward I ride, as if to the sky I'd go;
Two full moons seen since I left home below.
Where to lodge tonight? No place in sight —
But boundless sand, no soul in the dying light.
Original Poem
「碛中作」
岑参
走马西来欲到天，辞家见月两回圆。
今夜不知何处宿，平沙万里绝人烟。
Interpretation
This poem was composed during Cen Shen's first expedition beyond the frontier (approximately 749-751 AD) and is a representative work of his early frontier poetry. Unlike his later works from the Beiting period, which feature concrete depictions of frontier landscapes and expressions of heroic spirit, this poem captures the vast, desolate experience and existential loneliness of a single moment upon first entering the remote western regions, while still on the move. The poet chooses "Amidst the Desert Sands" as the specific setting, a choice rich in symbolic meaning: the desert is the ultimate form of space, a physical and psychological "end of the world."
Cen Shen was traveling west with the retinue of Gao Xianzhi, Military Governor of Anxi. The journey's length, the abrupt environmental shift, and the distance from home all acted upon the poet's sensitive mind, giving rise to this poem that appears straightforward but contains a profoundly desolate and boundless artistic conception. It is not a record of a specific battle or location, but rather a poetic distillation of the fundamental condition of the "campaigner" within endless time and space—a state of wandering and questioning verging on the philosophical. Thus, the poem transcends specific military chronicle, becoming a portrait of the "on the desert sands" moment that any soul traversing the wilderness of life might encounter.
First Couplet: "走马西来欲到天，辞家见月两回圆。"
Zǒu mǎ xī lái yù dào tiān, cí jiā jiàn yuè liǎng huí yuán.
Westward urging my horse, I seem to touch the sky; / Twice has the moon grown round and full since home goodbye.
The opening hits with a grand sense of spatial movement. "Urging my horse westward" conveys swift action and clear direction; "seem to touch the sky" uses extreme hyperbole to elevate the visual experience of the horizon into a sublime and utterly isolated psychological experience of touching the edge of the cosmos. This speaks not only of the road's length but of the traveler's unwavering will to press forward, to approach the limit. The second line abruptly turns to a meticulous reckoning of time: "Twice has the moon grown round and full since home goodbye." Using the moon's waxing and waning to measure the duration of absence is a classic mode in Chinese poetry for expressing the longing of the traveler. Two moons is not long in a lifetime, but on the westward trek through uninhabited wastes, each full moon is a painful reminder of reunion. The boundlessness of space and the measured mark of time create immense tension here, intertwining the bold spirit of the distant campaign with the quietly growing homesickness.
Second Couplet: "今夜不知何处宿，平沙万里绝人烟。"
Jīn yè bù zhī hé chù sù, píng shā wàn lǐ jué rén yān.
Where shall I rest tonight? I do not know. / A desert stretches endless, without a sign of man.
This couplet pushes the vast desolation accumulated in the first to a point of practical predicament and ultimate solitude. "Where shall I rest tonight?" is a simple, anxious question, voicing the traveler's most fundamental unease—uncertainty about shelter. The answer, "A desert stretches endless, without a sign of man," presents a breathtaking image. These eight words are the ultimate, most direct poetic definition of "desolation." "A desert stretches endless" describes the absolute flatness and infinite extension of space, stripping away all landmarks and shelter; "without a sign of man" declares the absolute absence of life. This is not merely a description of the natural environment but a metaphor for an existential condition: humanity cast into an absolute emptiness—where one sees no one before or behind, and lacks even present companions. The world is so vast, yet there is not a spot to "rest."
Holistic Appreciation
This heptasyllabic quatrain is one of Cen Shen's frontier poems with the most isolated conception and concise language. Like a monumental ink-wash painting rendered with the simplest strokes, it builds a world of intense philosophical tension between the motion of "urging my horse" and the stillness of "desert," between the lofty ambition of "touch the sky" and the immediate plight of "Where shall I rest?"
The poem's structure exhibits a remarkable balance between "outward expansion" and "inward contraction." The first two lines are expansive: the gaze reaches to the horizon, the thoughts trace back to the moon's cycles, both time and space are vastly stretched. The last two lines contract sharply inward: focusing on the specific moment "tonight," settling on the specific question of survival, "where to rest?" Yet, the answer to this specific question is the absolute emptiness of "a desert… without a sign of man." Thus, the insignificance of the individual and the primeval vastness of the cosmos, the immediate predicament and the eternal desolation, collide violently in this moment, producing a startling artistic effect.
The poem's emotion is complex yet restrained. There is the vigor of "urging my horse westward," the tenderness in "moon grown round and full," the bewilderment of "I do not know," and, above all, the unvoiced endurance facing the "desert… without a sign of man." Cen Shen does not voice lament; he merely presents this scene and feeling as it is. This very "as it is" contains immense emotional power and an underpinning of heroism—true fortitude is perhaps precisely seeing the truth of "without a sign of man" and still choosing to "urge the horse westward."
Artistic Merits
- Pushing Temporal-Spatial Contrasts to Extremes: The poem employs extreme treatments in both temporal and spatial dimensions. Spatially, from the vertical sublime of "touch the sky" to the horizontal boundlessness of "a desert stretches endless"; temporally, from the cyclical time of "twice… grown round and full" to the immediate time of "tonight." This multi-layered stacking of extremes condenses and intensifies the quintessential experience of frontier travel to its utmost.
- Abstract and Pure Visual Imagery: The visual elements in the poem are extremely refined: a running horse, the full moon, level desert. There are no specific mountains, rivers, or vegetation, only the most basic geometric forms (circle, level) and a trajectory of motion (westward). This highly distilled, almost abstract pictorial language instead attains greater symbolic and universal power, allowing the poetic conception to transcend the specific scene and touch upon the universal human state of mind when facing a primordial universe.
- Internal Construction of Emotional Tension: The poem's emotional force does not rely on direct expression but arises naturally from the juxtaposition of images and situations. The active advance of "urging my horse" versus the passive bewilderment of "Where shall I rest?"; the human warmth implied in "moon grown round and full" versus the cosmic cold of "a desert… without a sign of man." These internal contradictions and contrasts form the skeletal and muscular structure of the poem's emotion.
- Concise Language and Majestic Conception: The poem uses not a single obscure word, not a single ornate term, constructing itself purely with the simplest phrases. However, compounds like "touch the sky" and "without a sign of man," due to the extremity of their imagery and boldness of combination, achieve an effect of mastering complexity with simplicity, finding the extraordinary in the plain. Within its short frame, it opens up a vast and majestic artistic atmosphere—this is the linguistic charm of High Tang frontier poetry.
Insights
This work is like a mirror reflecting the nature of existence. What it reveals is far more than the hardship of campaigning; it is the fundamental human condition within infinite time and space. We are all travelers "urging our horses" toward a goal that seems to "touch the sky," marking time with moons that "grow round and full," yet inevitably encountering moments of "Where shall I rest?" and facing the internal or external "desert… without a sign of man."
It teaches us that the grandeur and desolation of life are often two sides of the same coin. The lofty aspiration to "touch the sky" necessarily accompanies the loneliness of "without a sign of man" and the unease of "nowhere to rest." True courage lies not in denying or escaping this desolation, but in following the poet's example: to clearly recognize it, to state it calmly, and in that statement, to affirm and accept one's own choice ("urging the horse westward"). This composure amidst vast desolation is itself a sublime posture of life.
Simultaneously, the poem shows how poetry transforms an experience of ultimate solitude into an aesthetic object that can be shared and resonate. When Cen Shen wrote "A desert stretches endless, without a sign of man," he not only recorded a personal momentary feeling but also found an eternal, grand, and beautiful imagistic home for the shared human feelings of loneliness and transience. It reminds us that one value of art may be precisely to solidify those ineffable predicaments of life into forms that can be contemplated, understood, and shared, allowing solitary individuals to find kindred spirits on the plane of aesthetic experience.
About the poet
Cen Can(岑参), 715 - 770 AD, was a native of Jingzhou, Hubei Province. He studied at Mt. Songshan when he was young, and later traveled to Beijing, Luoyang and Shuohe. Cen Can was famous for his border poems, in which he wrote about the border scenery and the life of generals in a majestic and unrestrained manner, and together with Gao Shi, he was an outstanding representative of the border poetry school of the Sheng Tang Dynasty.
