[Poem] Late Night, Year's End, Doing the Books with Du Fu

Late Night, Year's End,
Doing the Books with Du Fu

Ghost fires in the jade palace. Moonlight
a scattering of opals on the river. Over us
beasts of the zodiac march across the night.
We drink cup after cup of warm rice wine.
It's time to take out the ledger, to figure
the year's accounts. Du Fu, if our days
and nights are the principal, if all the years
are interest, then how much do we owe?
If I subtract my grief from joy, what is left?
Tell me, old friend, how does it balance?
In one of your last poems you talk about
the stars outside your hut, how impossible
to count them. There are no numbers,
you say, for this life. Who cares if we're
in the red? Or the black? Add a few zeros,
and we're rich. Erase a few, and we're poor.
You're right, Du Fu. Rich or poor, the night
each night burgeons within us. The mornings
open with sunlight, Why count them?
Instead of numbers, let me enter words
into the ledger, this account of our friendship,
this little poem from me to you, across
the glimmering, innumerable years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_Fu