CLEAR AFTER RAIN

Autumn, cloud blades on the horizon.
The west wind blows from ten thousand miles.
Dawn, in the clear morning air,
Farmers busy after long rain.
The desert trees shed their few green leaves.
The mountain pears are tiny but ripe.
A Tartar flute plays by the city gate.
A single wild goose climbs into the void.

 

TO MY RETIRED FRIEND WEI

It is almost as hard for friends to meet
As for the morning and evening stars.
Tonight then is a rare event,
Joining, in the candlelight,
Two men who were young not long ago
But now are turning grey at the temples.
To find that half our friends are dead
Shocks us, burns our hearts with grief.
We little guessed it would be twenty years
Before I could visit you again.
When I went away you were still unmarried;
But now these boys and girls in a row
Are very kind to their father’s old friend.
They ask me where I have been on my journey;
And the, when we have talked awhile,
They bring and show me wines and dishes,
Spring chives cut in the night-rain
And brown rice cooked freshly a special way.
My host proclaims it a festival.
He urges me to drink ten cups –
But what ten cups could make me as drunk
As I always am with your love in my heart?
Tomorrow the mountains will separate us;
After tomorrow – who can say?

TU FU 713 – 770 was a leading poet of the T’ung Dynasty. His popularity grew to such an extent that it is as hard to measure his influence as that of Shakespeare in England: it was hard for any Chinese poet not to be influenced by him. He was the favorite poet of Kenneth Rexroth, who has described him as “the greatest non-epic, non-dramatic poet who has survived in any language”, and commented that, “he has made me a better man, as a moral agent and as a perceiving organism”^. (Wikipedia)

I chose these two poems by Tu Fu because they both deal with Time and present a verbal picture that is so real and truthful. In Clear After Rain, he uses a series of short descriptive sentences of the scene after a spring rain that are as precise and clear as strokes of ink on rice paper. His longer poem in homage to his old friend Wei beautifully captures the passage of time in emotional terms. In seeing his friend in old age he is seeing himself and the round of twenty years of separation just past will be repeated on the morrow. Who knows if they will ever meet again.

All we ever have is this moment – this now – and we will never pass this way again.