Staying at Headquarters, Du Fu (300 Tang Shi #188)

[lnhammer]

Clear autumn—by the headquarters, the parasol tree is cold.
Alone in lodgings by the river, my wax candle slumps.
Throughout the night, a horn sounds sorrowful—I talk to myself.
Within the sky, the moon looks wonderful—but who sees it?
These times of wind-blown dust slip by—written news has stopped.
The border fort is desolate—advancing the army’s hard.
I have endured already ten full years a refugee—
Amid the roughly shifting perches, this one branch is safe.

宿府
清秋幕府井梧寒，
独宿江城蜡炬残。
永夜角声悲自语，
中天月色好谁看？
风尘荏苒音书绝，
关塞萧条行陆难。
已忍伶俜十年事，
强移栖息一枝安。

Written in 764, the tenth year since the start of the An Lushan Rebellion, while serving as a military advisor for his sponsor, the governor of Sichuan. Seven-character lines typically have a pause or break after the fifth character (so a 4-3 or 2-2-3 rhythm), but in l.3-4 it’s after the sixth (a 2-3-2 rhythm) as a sort of off-kilter syncopation—an example of Du Fu pushing the boundaries of poetic form. And then there’s the poeticism of that 中天, which would usually be 天中 —the difference between “amid the sky” and “the sky amid.”

---L.

Comments

[sartorias]

Very intense marrying of emotion with image. also interesting that the Chinese makes sense yet the English,. in rendering it, requires a dangling modifier.

[lnhammer]

I dunno about requires, but I had a hard time finding a way that wasn't awkward, and awkward the original certainly isn't.

[thawrecka]

That's lovely.

[lnhammer]

I like it.