Tu Fu

Ballad of the Army Wagons

Wagons rumble,
Horses neigh,
Marching men, each with bow and arrows at the waist.
Fathers and mothers, wives and children rush to bid them farewell
Till Hsien-yang bridge disappears in the dust.
Stumbling and clutching at their clothes, they bar the way in tears:
The sound of wailing rises into the clouds.
A bystander on the roadside questions a soldier:
The soldier merely replies, "Another conscription".
"Some of us at fifteen went north to guard the River;
Reaching forty, sent west to work the farms.
When we left, the village Elder bound our heads;
White-haired we return, still on border duty -
That border where blood has flowed to fill a sea,
And the Emperor's craving for territory is still unsatisfied.
Have you not heard, Sir, about the two hundred districts east of our mountains,
How thistle and medlar are creeping over thousands of villages?
Even where the women are sturdy, able to hoe and plough,
The grain grows anywhere - boundaries are all broken down.
It is even worse for the soldiers from Ch'in region, enduring the bitterness of battle,
Driven this way and that, no better than dogs or fowls.
Even though a local elder may question us,
Humble soldiers, dare we express resentment?
Only look at the present winter -
Still no relief for the Kuan-hsi forces,
Local officials urgently pressing for taxes:
Where are the taxes to come from?
It seems that bearing sons is a bad business,
Better to have borne girls instead.
Girls can marry in the neighborhood;
Boys will lie buried among common grasses.

Have you not seen, Sir, near the Kokonor,
The white bones of those long dead that no man gathers?
New ghosts murmur, the old ones sob:
You can hear them on dull days in the sound of the rain.