A light wind is rippling at the grassy shore....
Through the night, to my motionless tall mast,
The stars lean down from open space,
And the moon comes running up the river.
...If only my art might bring me fame
And free my sick old age from office! --
Flitting, flitting, what am I like
But a sand-snipe in the wide, wide world!
细草微风岸，危樯独夜舟。
星垂平野阔，月涌大江流。
名岂文章著，官应老病休。
飘飘何所似，天地一沙鸥。
Five-character-regular-verse
The date of this poem is uncertain, most commentators date it to 765. It is a poem about a journey, but also about the sadness of old age and wandering without support.
This poem was composed in the autumn of 765 CE, the first year of the Yongtai era under Emperor Daizong of the Tang dynasty. That spring, Du Fu's close friend and patron in Chengdu, Yan Wu, had passed away. With his support gone, the poet left his Chengdu thatched cottage with his family, traveling east by boat through the regions of Yuzhou and Zhongzhou. Nearing sixty, in frail health, without reliable means of livelihood, and with his aspirations shattered, Du Fu found himself truly adrift, "wandering between heaven and earth in the southwest." On this night, with his boat moored by the riverbank and facing the vast starry sky and the ceaseless flow of the great river, he experienced a violent collision within—the insignificance of the individual, the desolation of fate, and the eternity of the cosmos—giving rise to this timeless masterpiece.
Classical Chinese poetry thrives on Concision and Ambiguity. Without tense or number, the words create a timeless space where the reader becomes the co-creator of the poem's meaning.
Look for Contrasts: light and shadow, movement and stillness. Don't just translate the words; feel the Yijing (artistic conception) that lingers long after the last character.
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