For Wei Pa, In Retirement by Tu Fu

Our livelong days we never meeting

Move as do stars in other clusters,

Yet this evening (“And what an evening!”)

We’re sharing this lamp and candlelight;

But youth and strength, how briefly it lasts

For both our heads have become grizzled

And half of those we ask about, ghosts,

Till cries of shock pierce our very breasts:

How could we know twenty years would pass

Before I came again to your house?

Though in those days you were unmarried

Suddenly sons and daughters troop in,

“Greet merrily Papa’s Companion,”

Ask from what parts it is that I come?

But such exchange remains unfinished:

You chase them off to get out the wine

“And in night rain pull up spring onions”

To be steamed fresh with yellow millet…

Now (with your “Come, we can meet seldom”)

You’ve charged my glass ten times in sequence:

Ten times and still I’m not quite tipsy

But filled with sense of old acquaintance;

For tomorrow the hills divide us,

Both out of sight in the world’s affairs!