Du Fu Does Not Like Conscription (4/n)

What's worse than being dragged from your home?

To Leave a Home That Isn’t There
Du Fu

Untended through the Turbulence,
My land is full of brush and weeds.
This town was once a hundred homes
That war has scattered east and west.
The living — if they live — are lost;
The dead, we know, are in the mud.
Defeat has sent this vagrant home,
To find my former stamping grounds.
I walked for hours down dismal lanes,
Quite empty in the haggard sun,
Saw no-one but a barking fox
And wild cat with hackles raised.
What neighbours live around me now?
A widow here and there, that’s all.
But just as birds have favourite trees,
I’ll always stay. How could I leave?
It’s springtime, so I dig, alone,
And irrigate as night draws down.
The county sergeant heard I’d come
And drafts me as a squadron drum.
I’m shipping out from home, and yet
There’s no-one who will miss me here.
I’m still alone if posted near,
If far, I’ll slowly disappear.
When your hometown’s been laid to waste
What difference does distance make?
I just regret my mother, who
Was plagued by illness all her life.
She’s laid out five years in the hills.
She gave me life, got little back;
We’ve neither of us had much luck.
This fate no serf deserves to bear:
To leave a home no longer there.

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Another poem mourning the horrors of war from Du Fu’s journey across China in 759.

In this poem, Du Fu takes on a fictional voice: the village he refers to is not his own, nor the mother. His fictionalised characters are his way of representing and mourning the devastation of the war.

The Turbulence in the first line is the An Lushan rebellion, referred to in the Chinese text by the era name Tianbao (Heavenly Jewel). The Tianbao era was approximately the last third of Xuanzong’s reign, lasting from 742-756, and was mostly peaceful and prosperous. But its historical image was poisoned by the rebellion in 756, and the fall of Chang’an. Just three years later, Tianbao was already a byword for disaster.

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杜甫  无家别

寂寞天宝后，园庐但蒿藜。

我里百余家，世乱各东西。

存者无消息，死者为尘泥。

贱子因阵败，归来寻旧蹊。

久行见空巷，日瘦气惨凄。

但对狐与狸，竖毛怒我啼。

四邻何所有？一二老寡妻。

宿鸟恋本枝，安辞且穷栖。

方春独荷锄，日暮还灌畦。

县吏知我至，召令习鼓鞞。

虽从本州役，内顾无所携。

近行止一身，远去终转迷。

家乡既荡尽，远近理亦齐。

永痛长病母，五年委沟溪。

生我不得力，终身两酸嘶。

人生无家别，何以为蒸黎！