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In 757, I Escaped the Capital through Golden Light Gate and Found My Way to Fengxiang; in 758, I Was Transferred from Reminder of the Left to a [Minor] Position in Huazhou; Friends and Family Saw Me Off, and I Left through the Same Gate Thinking Sadly of the Previous Time, Du Fu
By this same road, I once returned to court
Through western outskirts truly thronged with Tartars,
And ever since, my courage has been broken—
My soul might not have all returned to me.
Close courtiers return to the capital,
But “transferred”? How’s this the emperor’s?
Without talent, each day I decline and age.
I halt my horse to gaze upon the palace.
至德二载甫自京金光门出问道归凤翔，乾元初从左拾遗移华州掾，与亲故别因出此门有悲往事
此道昔归顺，
西郊胡正繁。
至今残破胆，
应有未招魂。
近得归京邑，
移官岂至尊。
无才日衰老，
驻马望千门。
This is the demotion for rocking the boat that he was obliquely warned against in #99. Fengxiang was where Emperor Suzong ruled prior to the recapture of Chang’an from rebel forces (which are called “Hu,” even though the occupiers were mostly ethnic Han soldiers, because An Lushan was Turkic-born and all those northern barbarians are the same so we can just interchange their names). Huazhou is about 40 miles east of Chang’an, so this wasn’t a distant exile, but being appointed Commissioner of Education of a local district was a definite demotion. Line 6 is especially compacted even for Du Fu—he’s questioning how this transfer could be the emperor’s own order. Idiom: palace is literally “thousand doors.”
The Gregorian years in the title are in imperial-era form in the original, but life’s too short for trivial footnotes. Some translators invent a shorter title, treating the long text as a preface, and I can’t really blame them. I mean, it’s only a single character shorter than the poem itself.
---L.
By this same road, I once returned to court
Through western outskirts truly thronged with Tartars,
And ever since, my courage has been broken—
My soul might not have all returned to me.
Close courtiers return to the capital,
But “transferred”? How’s this the emperor’s?
Without talent, each day I decline and age.
I halt my horse to gaze upon the palace.
至德二载甫自京金光门出问道归凤翔，乾元初从左拾遗移华州掾，与亲故别因出此门有悲往事
此道昔归顺，
西郊胡正繁。
至今残破胆，
应有未招魂。
近得归京邑，
移官岂至尊。
无才日衰老，
驻马望千门。
This is the demotion for rocking the boat that he was obliquely warned against in #99. Fengxiang was where Emperor Suzong ruled prior to the recapture of Chang’an from rebel forces (which are called “Hu,” even though the occupiers were mostly ethnic Han soldiers, because An Lushan was Turkic-born and all those northern barbarians are the same so we can just interchange their names). Huazhou is about 40 miles east of Chang’an, so this wasn’t a distant exile, but being appointed Commissioner of Education of a local district was a definite demotion. Line 6 is especially compacted even for Du Fu—he’s questioning how this transfer could be the emperor’s own order. Idiom: palace is literally “thousand doors.”
The Gregorian years in the title are in imperial-era form in the original, but life’s too short for trivial footnotes. Some translators invent a shorter title, treating the long text as a preface, and I can’t really blame them. I mean, it’s only a single character shorter than the poem itself.
---L.