Ｈｏｍｅ－ｃｏｍｉｎｇ

Young， I left home and not till old do I come back;

My accent is unchanged， my hair no longer black.

The children whom I meet on the way don誸 know me.

襑here are you from， dear sir??they smile and ask with glee.

He Zhizhang (659-744) wrote this poem at 86 back at home in Yongxing (today’s Xiaoshan， a district of Hangzhou， capital of Zhejiang Province)， more than 50 years after his stay in the capital of the Tang (618-907). He was a poet， calligrapher and government official. A very fast and enjoyable friendship existed between He Zhizhang and Li Bai (701-762)， arguably the greatest poet of China. He Zhizhang had a passion for wine and was known as a man of idiosyncrasies. Twenty of his poems have survived the odds of time to testify to the poet’s art， personality， and his sensitive response to the beauty and sorrow of life. Although he retired as a poet and calligrapher of great renown， the kids at his home village knew nothing about the old man and treated him as a visitor at first sight.

The poet’s home-coming reflects the end of a life career in the capital and the beginning of his retirement. It would not be difficult to imagine how the poet feels at this juncture of his four-score-plus years. Has he changed so much? This is the question he asks himself. His accent remains yet his hair is no longer black. The smiling village kids are a welcome sight， but their curiosity strikes the point home: he is not the only one that has changed. The brevity of the poem reveals more than the one question posed by the kids. The poem ends abruptly but its echo travels far and touches a lot. He’s poem perfectly illustrates how masterfully a poet interweaves sentiments into a 28-word verse in which there are more than meets the eye. That is probably why it is one of the most popular Chinese poems on the subject of home-coming.