From “The Life of Tu Fu”

They say this is the only tree in the world that has these pears, for these pears have no desire to propagate elsewhere.

I thought of the Old Man Who Called His Chickens. He had hundreds of chickens, each with its own name. He could call its name and the chicken would come. I thought of him when all the candidates, including me, failed the exam.

____

In the Eastern Capital it is tiring being clever.

Chanting poems in the Hall of Gathering Kingfisher Feathers, drinking in the Pavilion for Gazing at Clouds.

I thought of the poet Hsi K’ang, who was often told that he was talented but unwise. Just before he was executed, he wrote the poem “Now I Am Ashamed.”

____

These days I’m already sad before I get drunk and drunk I have no place to go.
I tug at my robe but it still won’t cover my shins.

They say immortals eat cloud-seed rice, which is shattered mica.

I thought of Wang Hsien-chi. When thieves broke into his house, he asked them not to take his tattered green rug.

____

The music stops; moonlight shines on the planks of the floor.

Send me a letter.

____

I have a hard time repeating what everyone else says.

____

There are no men left; they’re conscripting boys.
The chubby ones have mothers saying goodbye; the thin ones just look forlorn.

Everyone has cousins who died in the war.
I remember, when we were kids, you were better than me at counting coins.

____

He said: “At fifteen you’re sent north to guard the river; at forty you’re sent west to the forts. Those who make it back home have gray hair; the rest are bones in some field.”

Half the people of Ch’in are now the wandering ghosts of the unburied. In the abandoned villages, the new ghosts are in torment and the old ghosts weep for them.

He said: “To kill a man, I’m taught, first shoot the horse. I watch the clouds, but can’t follow them away.”

____

An abandoned courtyard: an old tree:
A temple bell lying on its side:
The world I live in.

They win and we lose; we lose and they win.
Vines wrap around the rotting bones.

She knows he won’t come back from the army, but patches the clothes he left just in case.

____

No news; snow whirls.

These poor chrysanthemums took root in the wrong place.
My bean sprouts rotted in the damp and the melons cracked in the frost.

A hut with a single window made from the broken rim of a large pot.

The East Wind smells like blood.

Birds keep themselves hidden, but sing.

____

In the street a woman is weeping.
A boy walks by whistling.
An officer changes his horse.
The clouds are brown and unmoving.
The wind picks up.

All things do what they do:
Birds swoop to catch an insect.
Moonlight breaks through the forest leaves.
Soldiers guard the border.
I am trapped in this body.

____

I lift my face to watch the birds.
I turn my head, thinking someone has called me.

I wrote four poems:
on a sick cypress, on a sick orange tree, on a withered palm, and a withered nanmu.

You ask how I’m doing:
Listen to the wild geese echoing
and the warhorses galloping by.

____

Thousands of white-headed ravens on Redbird Gate.

For three months the beacon fires of the rebels in the mountains.

I remember when ordinary people were merely distrustful.

____

Here the men sit and the women stand; the men stay home and the women climb the mountains, collecting  firewood.

The landscape is beautiful, the weather terrible, and they call their temple Taking Poison.

____

There are cuckoos in West Sichuan but no cuckoos in East Sichuan.
There are cuckoos in Yunan but no cuckoos in Fuzhou.
They say when a cuckoo cries it sounds like the words “You should go home.”

Friends with good jobs have stopped writing.

____

Trees barely visible in the fog; only the sound of  the garrison drums.
Impossible to know if the news is just rumor:
Officials, they say, are disguising themselves as fisherman and butchers.
Rebels ride the horses of ghosts.
Why do they always burn things down?
I thought of that Immortal who lived in a world inside a clay pot.

____

So dark I eat dinner at breakfast.
So rainy I imagine the mountain washing away.
The downpour so strong fish in the river sank.
The mud so bad I was sorry I asked you over.

____

The world is damp and dry, damp or dry.
Two swallows suddenly came into my room.
They were raised in dust and wind.
It took them a long time to get here,
escaping the damp and dry of the world like me.

____

A single petal falling means less spring.
A kingfisher’s nest, a dragonfly’s wing:
Study closely the patterns of things.

The mind is crystal.
Rain soaks my clothes.

____

Here the houses are impressive, there are crowds and music in the streets.
I don’t know a soul.
In the shade of a mulberry I just stand and look at the bridge.
No one walks by the river.

Wind in the bamboo, foam from the river on the sand.
What news from the capital? I hear the cavalry’s retreated.

____

Moonlight on old clothes.
Old clothes and the same old crows.

I thought of those monkeys who were furious that they were given three acorns in the morning and four at night; so their keeper gave them four in the morning and three at night and they were peaceful again.

____

They beat drums all night; they whip themselves; they burn statues of dragons; they lay a dying man under the sun so that Heaven will take pity, but still no rain.

Soldiers keep wearing their armor in the heat; everyone else stays home, lying down.

____

Wandering for ten years, trying to alight on one safe branch.
I open my trunk and stare at the clothes.

I thought of the philosopher Yang Chu, who always wept when he came to a fork in the road.

Plants with thorns only seem to grow where people walk.

____

Soldiers still guard the ruined palace: rats run across the tiles.

A squirrel with folded hands outside his broken nest.

That dandelion in the wind once had roots.

Live like a wren, unnoticed on a high branch, and you’ll stay alive.

It’s been so many years: I imagine her face, looking at me skeptically.

____

I thought of the passage in Confucius where a pheasant on a bridge in the mountains sniffs three times and then flies off. No one has ever understood what that means.

I thought of General Yin Hao, who lost a battle and was demoted to a commoner. He spent the rest of his days writing the same two characters over and over in the air with his finger: how strange.

____

The moon, the river, the boat, an egret, a fish, a splash, a lamp rocking in the wind.