Tu Fu Died An Unknown Poet

South Wind

The days grow long, the mountains
Beautiful. The south wind blows
Over blossoming meadows.
Newly arrived swallows dart
Over the steaming marshes.
Ducks in pairs drowse on the warm sand.
- Tu Fu, as interpreted by Kenneth Rexroth, One Hundred Poems From The Chinese

Tu Fu (713-770) was a scholar in the court of Hsuan Tsung, or Ming Huang, “the Bright Emperor.” He criticized the morals and foreign policy of the court and was banished, and spent much of the rest of his life wandering up and down the Hsiang and Yangtze Rivers. He died an unknown poet living on a houseboat.

Shortly before his death at the age of 57 he wrote of disillusionment and failure.

Heading South

Spring returns to Peach Blossom River
and my sail is a cloud through maple forests.
Exiled, I lived for years in secret, moving on
farther from home with tear-stains on my sleeves.
Now old and sick, at last I’m headed south.
Remembering old friends, I look back north a final time.
A hundred years I sang my bitter song,
but not a soul remembers those old rhymes.
- Tu Fu, as interpreted by Sam Hamill, Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese

Now many consider Tu Fu the greatest poet in Chinese history, perhaps because of the emotion – both joy and sorrow – that his poems capture.

Tu Fu's wandering years — the houseboat, the rivers, the unnamed dying — sit at the heart of what this site holds: that a life of deep attention may go unrecognized, and that the poems survive anyway.