Su Wu

General Su Wu (c. 100 BC) was, with his friend Li Ling, a prisoner in the land of the Huns. After nineteen years Su Wu was released, while Li Ling chose to stay behind. Waley gives him one poem of farewell, addressed to his wife.

The poems here are Arthur Waley’s version in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918), given with the poet’s name as spelled in those books.