A Favorite Poet

I first met the poetry of Tu Fu almost sixty years ago when I was teaching at Berkeley Prep in Tampa and one of the students (hi, Evan) lent me his copy of Chinese poems, translated by Kenneth Rexroth.

I soon acquired my own copy and I still love the poetry, especially that of Tu Fu.

By the Winding River

Every day on the way home from

My office, I pawn another 

Of my Spring clothes. Every day

I come home from the river bank

Drunk. Everywhere I go, I owe

Money for wine. History

Records few men who lived to be

Seventy. I watch the yellow

Butterflies drink deep of the

Flowers, and the dragonflies

Dipping the surface of the

Water again and again.

I cry out to the Spring wind, 

And the light and the passing hours,

We enjoy life such a little 

While, why should men cross each other?

                           Tu Fu

 

 

A Poem by Tu Fu

The days grow long, the mountains

Beautiful. The south wind blows

Over blossoming meadows.

Newly arrivedswallows dart

Over the steaming marshes.

Ducks in pairs drowse on the warm sand.

  Tu Fu, 713-779

                                                                ( translation by Kenneth Rexroth)

Tu Fu Is My Go To

Dawn Over the Mountains

The city is silent,

Sound drains away,

Buildings vanish in the light of dawn,

Cold sunlight comes on the highest peak,

The thick dust of night

Clings to the hills,

The earth opens,

The river boats are vague,

The still sky--

The sound of falling leaves.

A huge doe comes to the garden gate,

Lost from the herd,

Seeking its fellows.

                        Tu Fu (translation Kenneth Rexroth) 

Tu Fu lived in the T'ang Dynasty (713-770) but his poems, as translated by Rexroth, still speak to me. I've had the little paperback  One Hundred Poems from the Chinese of Rexroth's translations since a student loaned me a copy about fifty years ago, when I was teaching at Berkeley Prep and wearing heels and pantyhose everyday. Those are gone, thank goodness, but the poems stay at my bedside.