Du Fu

I once worked at a bookstore where one of our customers was a retired art teacher. One time she described Diego Rivera as a monster painter. He was just a monster painter, she kept saying. A monster painter. I’ve never heard that compliment before or since, but it’s what keeps coming to mind when I think about Du Fu (Tu Fu). He was a monster poet. In the 13th century, long after Du Fu’s time, a Chinese chancellor was imprisoned by the invading Mongols. For four years, the chancellor did nothing but chant Du Fu’s poems, rearranging the lines to make poems of his own. Everything he had to say had already been said by Du Fu, the chancellor wrote before he was executed.

Du faced an imprisonment of his own during the An Lushan Rebellion. Du’s youngest son had died from starvation only the year before, but Du left his family to join the emperor in the north. Shortly into his journey, he was captured by the rebels. Too minor to be executed, he was forced to live in the capital for a year before he escaped and reunited with his family. He spent the next few years in poverty, moving frequently to escape the fighting and staying with friends whenever possible. He won a brief period of idyll in late middle age and spent two years in a thatched cottage thanks to a patron’s largesse. When the patron died, Du had to move once again. He died on a boat at 58, sick with swollen limbs in a flat country far from home.

Cold wind breaks out here at sky’s end:
so what is it you’re thinking, old friend?

How could geese ever bring news, now
autumn floods drown rivers and lakes?

Art resents life fulfilled, forest demons
feed on travelers with delight: why not

sink poems deep into Sun-Weave-River,
talk things over with that ill-used ghost?

Knowing full well how cozy my little thatch library is,
quick swallows over the river come gliding in nonstop:

beaks clutching mud, they spatter ch’in and books, and
darting at insects, crash into whoever dares appear here.

Our young servant’s bound the chickens to sell at market,
and the bound chickens thrash about, squawk and shriek.

My family hates how the chickens eat insects and beetles,
but don’t they know sold chickens get cooked for dinner?

And how can we say which matters most, chicken or bug?
So I shout for the servant to set them free. Chicken or bug,

life or death—it never ends. My refuge this mountain hut,
I gaze out at the cold river, and it’s inside my eyes flowing.

Oxen and sheep come back down long ago,
brushwood gates closed, a windswept moon

rises into its own clear night, my old garden
nowhere among these rivers and mountains.

Crag-rock springs cascade down dark cliffs.
Frost infuses autumn-grass distances. White

hair is radiant by lamplight, but why assume
its flame flickering out foretells dark trouble?

In farmland outside a lone city, our river
village inhabits streamwater confusions.

Deep mountains hurry brief winter light
here, lofty trees at ease high amid winds.

Cranes glide down, touch cloud shallows.
Sharing our thatch hut, chickens settle-in.

All night long, books and ch’in scattered
candlelight—I can see through my death.

Tonight
is this same moonlight

my wife is alone at her window
in Fuzhou

I can hardly bear
to think of my children

too young to understand
why I can’t come to them

her hair
must be damp from the mist

her arms
cold jade in the moonlight

when will we stand together
by those slack curtains

while the moonlight dries
the tear-streaks on our faces?

The state goes to ruin
mountains and rivers survive

spring in the city
thick leaves, deep grass

in times like these
the flowers seem to weep

birds, as if they too
hated separation

flutter close by
startle the heart

for three months
the beacon fires have been lit

a letter from home
is worth a fortune

this white hair is getting sparse
from scratching

almost too thin
to hold a hatpin!

As I age I seem to grow
lazier and more stupid

more or less unable to plan ahead

when we’re hungry
I ask where crops are ample

and when we’re cold
I’m suddenly interested in the South.

My thatched cottage stands
just west of Thousand Mile Bridge

this Hundred Flower Stream
would please a hermit fisherman

bamboo sways in the wind
graceful as any court beauty

rain makes the lotus flowers
even more red and fragrant

but I no longer hear from friends
who live on princely salaries

my children are always hungry
with pale and famished faces

does a madman grow more happy
before he dies in the gutter?

I laugh at myself—a madman
growing older, growing madder.

A light wind stirs
the fine beach grass

the tall mast stands
over this lone night boat

the stars hang close
above the level plain

the moon bobs along
in the great river

will poems like this
ever bring me fame?

age and sickness bar me
from holding a high office

drifting, drifting here
what am I really like?

a lone sand gull
somewhere between earth and sky.