The Jade Mountain/Seeing Li Po in a Dream

by Du Fu

SEEING LI PO IN A DREAM

I

There are sobs when death is the cause of parting;But life has its partings again and again.. . . From the poisonous damps of the southern riverYou had sent me not one sign from your exile—Till you came to me last night in a dream,Because I am always thinking of you. . . .I wondered if it were really you,Venturing so long a journey.You came to me through the green of a forest,You disappeared by a shadowy fortress . .Yet out of the midmost mesh of your snare, How could you lift your wings and use them?. . . I woke, and the low moon's glimmer on a rafterSeemed to be your face, still floating in the air.. . . There were waters to cross, they were wild and tossing;If you fell, there were dragons and river-monsters.

II

This cloud, that has drifted all day through the sky,May, like a wanderer, never come back. . . .Three nights now I have dreamed of you—As tender, intimate and real as though I were awake.And then, abruptly rising to go,You told me the 'perils of adventureBy river and lake—the storms, the wrecks,The fears that are borne on a little boat;And, here in my doorway, you rubbed your white headAs if there were something puzzling you.. . . Our capital teems with officious. people,While you are alone and helpless and poor.Who says that the heavenly net never fails?It has brought you ill fortune, old as you are.. . . A thousand years' fame, ten thousand years' fame—What good, when you are dead and gone?

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