Sent to Reminder of the Left Du, Cen Can (Tang Shi #99)

[lnhammer]

We climbed vermilion steps together.
Amethyst walls divide our duties:
Dawn court, you follow Heaven Protectors—
Nights, I return from burning incense.
My white hairs: sorrow that flowers scatter;
Your clear skies: envy of birds in flight.
Sage of the court sans faults to deal with,
You know that remonstrance is rare.

寄左省杜拾遗
联步趋丹陛，
分曹限紫微。
晓随天仗入，
暮惹御香归。
白发悲花落，
青云羡鸟飞。
圣朝无阙事，
自觉谏书稀。

Reminder Du is Du Fu the poet during one of his rare government jobs, as an advisor to the emperor—not Xuanzong but his successor Suzong—a position that custom understood as ceremonial, which he lost for taking seriously and actually submitting memorials of remonstrance about a year after his appointment in May 757. The Heaven Protectors were the imperial guards (or more technically, their ceremonial weapons), which he followed into the audience hall in the procession starting the early morning court session, and clear sky was a common image for high office.

---L.

Comments

[sartorias]

Yet another one intense with image and implication. I have to confess I prefer these to the four line ones which are admittedly elegant, but to me so tightly wound that they are closer to math than anything else written.

[lnhammer]

I like the scope the larger size gives the poets — the quatrains need the same skills as epigrams, and the conception has to be sized just right. I started with those because bite-sized.