Du Fu (杜甫)

How hard do soldiers work and toil,

Building ramparts on western soil!

Iron-clad bastions high and low

Like walls along the mountain go.

I ask an officer near by

If against foes are built walls high.

He asks me to dismount and look

Around and points to mountain nook.

The forts on the peaks scrape the sky,

Over them even birds can’t fly.

When come the foe, we guard the wall,

There’s no fear for the capital.

He shows me the narrow pass too,

Only single chariots file through.

When guarded with long spear by one,

The fortress can be forced by none.

But defeated at Peach Grove, alas!

Ten thousand men slain at the pass.

Please tell the general guarding here:

Be not defeated as that year!

I try to drink, but food’s still cold on festive day;

In hermit’s cap, at table, drear and bleak I stay.

My boat is drifting on above a mirrored sky,

The flowers look veiled in mist to wrinkled eye.

The listless curtains see butterflies dancing past;

Over the rapids gulls on gulls are skimming fast.

For miles and miles outspread cloud on cloud, hill on hill,

But the imperial town lies farther northward still.

In the eighth month autumn's high winds angrily howl,

And sweep three layers of thatch from off my house.

The straw flies over the river, where it scatters,

Some is caught and hangs high up in the treetops,

Some floats down and sinks into the ditch.

The urchins from the southern village bully me, weak as I am;

They're cruel enough to rob me to my face,

Openly, they carry the straw into the bamboo.

My mouth and lips are dry from pointless calling,

I lean again on my cane and heave a sigh.

The wind soon calms, and the clouds turn the colour of ink;

The autumn sky has turned completely black.

My ancient cotton quilt is cold as iron,

My darling children sleep badly, and kick it apart.

The roof leaks over the bed- there's nowhere dry,

The rain falls thick as hemp, and without end.

Lost amid disorder, I hardly sleep,

Wet through, how can I last the long nights!

If I could get a mansion with a thousand, ten thousand rooms,

A great shelter for all the world's scholars, together in joy,

Solid as a mountain, the elements could not move it.

Oh! If I could see this house before me,

I'd happily freeze to death in my broken hut!