Tonight over Fu-zhou, as in Ch'ang-an, stark bright the moon;
By your bedroom window, you gaze at it alone.
Faraway,
I weep for our little boy and girl, too
To recall Ch'ang-an or to understand why I'm not home.
I can smell your scented silk-black hair damped by mist,
See your fair white arms turn jade-cold by moon-glaze.
Oh, when shall we lean again at the same window,
Under the same radiance, the rivers of our tears dried? Translated by Stanton Hagerin Huangshan:
Poems from the T'ang Dynasty (Cape Cod: 21st Editions, 2010)Before Du Fu's "Moonlit Night," few Chinese poems had been written to or about a poet's wife.
When previously a woman became the subject of a poem, she was usually a dazzling, exotic courtesan.
Tu Fu, however, wrote many poems about his wife and children.
