On Poverty: Sitting at night, I was moved to write this poem

COOL POEMS: Introduction > THE POEMS

Topic: On Poverty

Author: Fan Chengda (1126-1191)

Sitting at night, I was moved to write this poem

In the still of night each house slumbers, doors shut tight;
Throughout the town wind and rain rush the cold along.
Who’s son is that, calling out selling fortunes?
Borrowing against the dawn for tomorrow’s breakfast change?

Comments: This poem is essentially a Confucian argument against poverty. It doesn’t appeal to revelation or the Bible; it doesn’t say that God says poverty is bad or that we’ll go to Heaven if we give alms to the poor. It asks us instead to imagine that that poor man out there selling fortunes during a nasty night in the end is someone else’s son, brother, father, or husband. Like us he has a family, he has people who love him, and who raised him; he is human just as we are, and he is suffering. Because Mencian philosopy held that a good government would see to the happiness and prosperity of its people, Fan’s poem is also a critique of Song government policies which permit such poverty to develop and persist.

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