Du Fu
I Came In and Heard Wailing
He wrote the thing he least wanted to write
Du Fu, Five Hundred Words on the Road from the Capital to Fengxian, 755
Something happened that you are ashamed of. Whether to say it. Why Du Fu put his son's death into a poem.
What actually happened?
In the winter of 755 he travelled from the capital back to his family at Fengxian. At the door: I came in and heard wailing; my youngest son had starved to death. He held office. His child had starved. The next two lines are shorter still: shamed to be a father, no food, and so the boy died young. No detour, no explanation, four lines. The poem runs five hundred words and goes on to the suffering of the empire, but it begins with the one thing at home he least wanted to write.
Put the worst of it first
The poem is about a country's hunger, and it opens with his own household. Going around your own case to describe other people's is visible to everyone as evasion. Set out the humiliating thing first and the rest of what you say can stand.
To explain a bad stretch, start with the part you least want to mention. Then people believe the rest.
Shamed, and no because after it
War, poverty, a career pursued far from home: all true, and he names none of them. One word, shame, and the responsibility sits with him. Owning it cleanly is what lets a thing finish; a defence keeps it open.
I did not do it is enough. Everything that comes after because can be left off.
Written down, it stops being a hole
He carried this for the rest of his life, but he gave it a place: a formal poem, with lines before it and lines after. Pain that has never been written has no edges. Pain that has been written has somewhere to sit.
Put the thing you cannot get past into a piece of writing with a beginning and an end.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you did the thing you are most ashamed of, or failed at what mattered most, and have told nobody.
Ask first: if I had to account for this stretch, what is the part I least want to mention, and can I say I did not do it with no because after it?
Where it goes wrong: reading this as a duty to confess in public. He wrote a poem, for the readers a poem has. The point is facing it yourself and not dodging when you speak.
Lines to keep
Say the thing you least want to say, and the rest is believed.
Pain never written has no edges; written, it has somewhere to sit.
Same situation, other people are asking
It was my fault and I can't move past it.The more I explain, the worse it gets.I can't say why I did it.I've never told anyone. I've carried it for years.I'm the one who did wrong · all 7 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.