The cloud floats off
the way the sun went
the traveler doesn’t come back

Three nights in a row
I dreamed of you, old friend
so real I could have touched you!

You left in a hurry
I’ll bet
you’re having a bad journey

Storms come up fast
on those rivers and lakes
don’t fall out of your boat!

Leaving, framed in the doorway
you scratched your snowy head
I knew you didn’t want to go

Bureaucrats
fatten in the capital
While a poet goes cold and hungry

If there is justice in heaven
what sent you out
to banishment?

Ages to come
will warm themselves
at your verses

But it’s
a cold, silent world
you left behind

-Tu Fu (712-770 AD)