74. Grieving by the River | Du Fu

前面写才人射鸟，一句「一箭正坠双飞翼」，写足了盛时的意气；紧接两联，明眸皓齿忽然变成血污游魂，中间没有过渡，也没有一句解释。杜甫不提马嵬驿，不提六军不发，只把两张面孔并排放在一起。这个处理方式比直接写事更重：读者知道这中间发生了什么，而诗不肯说。同一首诗里，前一半是他在曲江边回忆的繁华，后一半是同一个地方、同一个人的结局。杜甫不评论，也不控诉，只让「今何在」三个字自己去问。

Earlier the palace woman shoots at a bird, and one arrow brought down a pair of wings writes the confidence of the good days to the full; two couplets later bright eyes and white teeth have become a bloodied wandering soul, with no transition and no explanation. Du Fu does not mention Mawei, does not mention the army refusing to move; he lays two faces side by side. The handling is heavier than narrating the event: the reader knows what happened in between, and the poem refuses to say it. In the same poem, the first half is the splendor he remembers by the Qujiang, the second the end of that same person in that same place. Du Fu neither comments nor accuses; he lets where are they now do the asking.

开头两句里有两个动作：哭，但哭声咽回去；走，但走得很小心。这两个动作说明杜甫当时是什么处境——他在一个被占领的城里，怀念的是旧朝的宫廷，不能明着来。整首诗的声调都是从这九个字里长出来的：明明有很多话，说出来全是压着的；明明在写繁华，落笔都在写锁、写深、写无消息。结尾「欲往城南望城北」也是同一个人的动作——想走一个方向，身体却朝另一个方向去。首尾两个动作，把这个人的状态框住了。

The opening two lines hold two actions: weeping, with the sound swallowed; walking, with great care. They say what Du Fu's position was — inside an occupied city, mourning the former court, unable to do it openly. The tone of the whole poem grows out of those words: there is a great deal to say, and all of it comes out pressed down; he is writing splendor, and everything he sets down is locked, deep, wordless. The closing he means to go south of the city yet looks north of it is the same man's action — to intend one direction while the body takes another. Two actions, head and tail, frame the man's condition.

「人生有情泪沾臆，江水江花岂终极」，前一句说的是人的有限：有情，所以会哭，泪水有一个源头，也会流完。后一句说的是景的无限：江水一直流，江花一年一年开，没有尽头。杜甫把这两件事放在一起，不解释它们的关系，让读者自己去感受那个不对称——一个会结束的东西在看一个不会结束的东西。这个写法出现在结尾之前，紧接着才是黄昏、胡骑、满城尘土，于是那点哲理立刻被现实盖住，诗也没有停在感慨上，又落回了眼前。

Man, having feeling, wets his breast with tears; but river water and river flowers — do they ever end? The first line gives human finitude: having feeling means weeping, and tears have a source and will run out. The second gives the boundlessness of scenery: the river runs on, the flowers open year after year, without end. Du Fu sets the two together and does not explain their relation, leaving the reader to feel the asymmetry — something that ends looking at something that does not. The passage comes just before the close, and immediately after come dusk, nomad cavalry and dust over the whole city, so the reflection is covered by the actual at once and the poem does not settle into musing but falls back to the present.