Facing Snow by Du Fu (Translated by Stanton Hager)

FACING SNOW
by Du Fu

Battle-slaughter musters fresh legions of weeping ghosts;
Old, alone, fretful, I mutter poems, hum tunes.

A chaos of clouds, thrusting down, swallows dusk's last glints;
Dense unceasing snow is danced aboutand about by the wind.

Draining a wine cask of its green dregs, I cast aside the ladle;
The fire's gone out, yet a faint red warmthclings to the stove.

Here, as everywhere, war has stemmed the flow of news;
Perennial news in books? How vain and prattling they seem now!

Translated by Stanton Hager in Huangshan: Poems from the T'ang
Dynasty (Cape Cod: 21st Editions, 2010). Copyright 2012, 2010, 2006.