Tu Fu, two poems

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Facing Snow

After the battle, many new ghosts cry,
The solitary old man murmurs in his grief.
Ragged low cloud thins the light of dusk,
Thick snow dances back and forth in the wind.
The wine ladle's cast aside, the cup not green,
The stove still looks as if a fiery red.
To many places, communications are broken,
I sit, but cannot read my books for sorrow.


Thinking Of My Brothers On A Moonlit Night

The army drum cuts off people's actions,
A lone goose sounds on the borderland in autumn.
Tonight we start the season of white dew,
The moon is just as bright as in my homeland.
My brothers are spread all throughout the land,
No home to ask if they are living or dead.
The letters we send always go astray,
Still the fighting does not cease.

~by Tu Fu