1085. A Message to Po Chu-I - W. S. Merwin

In that tenth winter of your exile

the cold never letting go of you

and your hunger aching inside you

day and night while you heard the voices

out of the starving mouths around you

old ones and infants and animals

those curtains of bones swaying on stilts

and you heard the faint cries of the birds

searching in the frozen mud for something

to swallow and you watched the migrants

trapped in the cold the great geese growing

weaker by the day until their wings

could barely lift them above the ground

so that a gang of boys could catch one

in a net and drag him to market

to be cooked and it was then that you

saw him in his own exile and you

paid for him and kept him until he

could fly again and you let him go

but then where could he go in the world

of your time with its wars everywhere

and the soldiers hungry the fires lit

the knives out twelve hundred years ago

I have been wanting to let you know

the goose is well he is here with me

you would recognize that old migrant

he has been with me for a long time

and is in no hurry to leave here

the wars are bigger now than ever

greed has reached numbers that you would not

believe and I will not tell you what

in done to geese before they kill them

now we are melting the very poles

of the earth but I have never known

where he would go after he leaves me

1084 - On Setting A Migrant Goose Free - Po Chu-I (Bay Juyl) (772-846)

Translated by David Hinton

Snows heavy at Hsan-yang this tenth-year winter,

river water spawns ice, tree branches break and fall,

and hungry birds flock east and west by the hundred,

a migrant goose crying starvation loudest among them.

Pecking through snow for grass, sleeping nights on ice,

its cold wings lumber slower and slower up into flight,

and soon it’s tangled in a river boy’s net, carried away

snug in his arms, and put for sale alive in the market.

Once a man of the north, I’m accused and exiled here.

Man and bird, though different, we’re both visitors,

and it hurts a visiting man to see a visiting bird’s pain,

so I pay the ransom and set you free. Goose, o soaring

goose, rising into clouds—where will you fly now?

Don’t fly northwest, that’s the last place you should go.

There in Huai-hsi, rebels still loose, there’s no peace,

just a million armored soldiers long massed for battle:

imperial and rebel armies grown old facing each other.

Starved and exhausted, they’d love to get hold of you,

those soldiers, The’d shoot you down and have a feast

then pluck your wings clean to feather their arrows.