While winter daylight shortens in the elemental scale
And snow and frost whiten the cold-circling night,
Stark sounds the fifth-watch with a challenge of drum and bugle.
...The stars and the River of Heaven pulse over the three mountains;
I hear women in the distance, wailing after the battle;
I see barbarian fishermen and woodcutters in the dawn.
...Sleeping-Dragon, Plunging-Horse, are no generals now, they are dust --
Hush for a moment, O tumult of the world.
Original Poem:
「阁夜」
杜甫
岁暮阴阳催短景， 天涯霜雪霁寒霄。
五更鼓角声悲壮， 三峡星河影动摇。
野哭千家闻战伐， 夷歌数处起渔樵。
卧龙跃马终黄土， 人事音书漫寂寥。
Interpretation:
This poem was written in the winter of 766 A.D., when Du Fu was living in the West Pavilion in Kui Zhou, having been exiled from Yunan. At this time, the war had not yet completely subsided, and there were often sounds of war in Kui Prefecture. In addition, the poet’s close friends, Zheng Qian, Li Bai, Yan Wu, and Gao Shi, died one after another, and he felt particularly lonely and desolate.
The poet writes about living in the West Pavilion, the coldness of the long winter nights. Near the end of the year, the day is short and the night is long, and the poet, who has fallen to the remote place of the end of the world (Kui Zhou), feels the coldness of the night in this frosty and snowy night, doubly feeling the coldness of the night. The surface is written in reality, but at the same time, it is also written in the psychological world.
What the poet hears and sees in the cold night. The first frost and snow, the cold air, the dawn of the fifth night, the mournful sound of the horn is still constant, can be seen in Kui Zhou has been filled with a strong war atmosphere. Unsleeping poet’s eyes look out the window, the Three Gorges river reflecting the stars, sparkling, rippling with the waves. Ancient people have the so-called star river shaking symbolizes the war. Here, the poet explicitly wrote the river scene, a metaphor for the war has not been, expressing the extreme disgust of the war.
Following the previous couplet, write the poet before dawn heard. As soon as I heard the sound of horns and war, thousands of families cried bitterly, and the cries were everywhere; fishermen and woodcutters also sang mournful songs in the river and on the mountains. All these anti-war sounds tormented the poet’s heart.
In the face of the people’s cries of suffering, the poet felt lonely and helpless, and had to fall into endless pain. At this time, suddenly thought of Kui Zhou’s Wuhou Temple and the White Emperor Temple, felt that Zhuge Liang as a wise man and Gongsun Shu as the end of the Western Han Dynasty in the chaos according to the Shu claimed the emperor, although the wise and evil different, but all heroes of the world, and finally returned to the “yellow earth”, into the withered bones, such as I drifted through a lifetime of loneliness and what can be done about it? Therefore, although the personnel voice book is cut off, but also “diffuse lonesome”, it is nothing! The poet seems to be comforting himself, but in fact, the meaning of the poem is the indignation and sadness of the “war”.
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.
