Moonlit Night by Du Fu (Translated by Stanton Hager)

 Tonight over Fu-zhou, as in Ch'ang-an, stark bright the moon;

 By your bedroom window, you gaze at it alone.

Faraway, I weep for our little boy and girl, too young

To recall Ch'ang-an or to understand why I'm not home.

I can smell your scented silk-black hair damped by mist,

See your fair white arms turn jade-cold by moon-glaze.

Oh, when shall we lean again at the same window,

Under the same radiance, the rivers of our tears dried?

Translated by Stanton Hager

in Huangshan: Poems from the T'ang Dynasty (Cape Cod: 21st Editions, 2010)

Before Du Fu's "Moonlit Night," few  Chinese poems had been written to or about a poet's wife. When previously a woman became the subject of a poem, she was usually a dazzling, exotic courtesan. Tu Fu, however, wrote many poems about his wife and children.