* xīng-hé, the star-river (David Hawkes)
** the westernmost of the Three Gorges (ibid)
*** the statesman Chu-ko Liang, who at one time lived nearby on Sleeping Dragon Hill (ibid)
**** 1st century warlord Kung-sun Shu, who controlled the region around K'uei-chou (ibid)






Gé yè
Tu Fu
K'uei-chou c.766

Regulated Verse poem in heptasyllabics.
8 lines.

Translated August–September 2025
Based on translation, commentary, vocabulary and notes by David Hawkes: A Little Primer of Tu Fu. Oxford. Clarendon. 1967. Chapter 29, pp181–184 and p159.

Tu Fu.. and his family arrived at K'uei-chou, overlooking the Yantze gorges, in the spring of 766.. [T]hey found a cottage in a hill-village a few miles outside it.

Gé: a large, high building of more than one storey and usually open on two or more of its sides; a large pavilion. The gé [of the title] is the X&imacron;-gé, or 'West House', a public building in K'uei-chou, part of which was placed at Tu Fu's disposal in the autumn of 766 [for] when he was staying in the city.
[David Hawkes]

The An Lushan rebellion began in December 755.. It caused enormous disruption to Chinese society: the census of 754 recorded 52.9 million people, but ten years later, the census counted just 16.9 million, the remainder having been displaced or killed.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_Fu]

Located in the.. southwestern inland region, Guizhou is a transportation hub.. and an important part of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. It is the country's first national-level comprehensive pilot zone for big data, a mountain tourism destination, [and] one of the birthplaces of ancient Chinese humans and ancient Chinese culture.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guizhou]

pavilion, n. – ME., fr. OF. (= F.) pavillon, fr. L. pāpiliōnem, acc. of pāpilio, 'butterfly', used in the Middle Ages to denote a tent, because it resembles a butterfly with outstretched wings.
Klein's Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. Elsevier 1971.

The auricular pavilion or pinna.. [receives] sound waves around us, which are still vibrations of the air, and from there they pass into the auditory canal. These sound waves make the eardrum vibrate, which in turn causes a chain movement in the ossicles of the middle ear, transferring the vibrations to the cochlea, in the inner ear.
[https://claso.net/en/blog/how-does-the-ear-work]

Pavilion is an ongoing listening and research project by a group of artists with a common interest in long-term studies of place: Andrea Bakketun, Espen Sommer Eide, Geir Tore Holm, Øyvind Novak Jenssen, Søssa Jørgensen, Signe Lidén, Marie Nerland, Randi Nygård, Karoline Sætre, Jiska Huizing and Hild Borchgrevink. Thanks to Signe Lidén for the connection and the term: pavilion.
[https://paviljong.flytedokk.org/]


thinking of ways the poem is reverberant: as a tight crystalline form, it produces sounds when read. it also functions as a listening device, a receiver and receptacle for incoming thoughts and sounds, the way a transducer can work as a speaker or a microphone, depending on how it s wired. how the poem here is open: receptive, as a building with an open side, to its surroundings. how this condition relates to night time, as a pavilion, an exposed period of heightened or extended vulnerability or sensitivity, a tent or the oscillating membrane of a kazoo, ear or electret condenser microphone, susceptible to incoming sounds, energies, situations. its movement across and between scales as it registers the mountainous topography activated by military signals and the dispersed sounds of people's nocturnal lives, opaque to the writer, in unfamiliar languages. its lines push / are pushed out variably to the right in this version like a sound meter. awake in the night of history, which Tu Fu experiences as time out of joint, and Giorgio Agamben describes as broken backed, unable to begin something, the sleepless wait for first light, when colour and thickness return to the earth. coming to you as a capsule, a deeply lagged transmission, the text strangely anticipates the sense of isolation experienced in the midst of thick information flows, the 'comprehensive pilot zone for big data' as experienced under occupation. inescapably, Tu Fu registers the sounds of warfare as they are discharged and enter into the surrounding soundworld. in the way Amy Sharrocks submits to being changed by water, Tu Fu submits to an attunement and exposure: almost involuntarily, as via a sensitive instrument or sensor, a record accumulates, which David Hawkes in turn intercepts, studies and studiously, almost selflessly de-codes. in this sense it feels as though the failure of Tu Fu's projects and ambitions to intervene effectively in contemporary history is what underwrites the particular remaining-openness, or receptivity of these texts, their ability to carry basic solidarities weakly across hard to imagine spans of time. certain moments of uncertainty, perplexity, loss of momentum, lack of tactics, serve as openings for these transmissions, such as staying overnight in a historic building, when your family is scattered and or out of reach