Re-Reading Tu Fu Thirty Years Later

Holly Hughes

 

Somewhere it is still spring in the mountains.
All these years I've come alone, seeking you,

 

far off in your own land, your own century.
You took to the road with your quill pen,

 

emptied a bottle each night with friends,
still rose at dawn to write bittersweet

 

poems that ring, temple bells across
these centuries. We will never meet,

 

though for years I imagined I might find
you still wandering the jagged ridge, catch

 

you and Li Po late some night, drunk
on the cold moon. Tell me, who

 

was the you in that poem I committed
to memory at twenty-two, seeking

 

a life other than my own?
So many seasons to see what's here.

 

And so many years later, who is it
who still wants to become you,

 

even knowing, now, what it means:
an empty boat, drifting?