The capital lies shattered, yet mountains and rivers remain; spring has come to the city, but neglect has let its plants and trees grow thick. Grieving over the times, I cannot help weeping at the flowers; distressed by separation from my family, even birdsong startles my heart. Warfare continues without end, and a letter from home seems worth ten thousand taels of gold. The more I scratch my white hair, the thinner and shorter it grows, until it can scarcely hold a hairpin.

国: here, the capital Chang’an. 破: fallen to an enemy and devastated. 感时: grieving over the state of the times. 恨别: suffering from separation. 花溅泪、鸟惊心: flowers splashing tears and birds startling the heart can be read both as the poet grieving at flowers and birds and as a transfer of human emotions onto them.

烽火: beacon fires, standing for warfare. 连三月: emphasizes the war's prolonged duration; specific months should not be determined dogmatically from the literal wording alone. 抵: to equal; to be worth.

浑: simply, utterly. 不胜（shēng）簪: the hair is so sparse it can scarcely hold the pin used to secure it.

Reading guide: Du Fu wrote this poem in the spring of the second year of Zhide (757), while stranded in Chang’an during the An Lushan Rebellion. The fall of the capital and separation from his family enter the spring landscape together, with the vast upheaval of war ultimately taking shape in a letter from home and a head of white hair.

The unchanged mountains and rivers and luxuriant vegetation would normally show nature continuing, but placed after “国破” (“the state lies shattered”), they throw human devastation into relief. Spring scenery thus becomes more than beauty: it becomes a place where wounds are stirred.

The latter half turns from the country to the family, then from a letter home to the body. A single scratching of the head makes accumulated anxiety visible as aging; without any loud pronouncement, the ending makes war's damage to ordinary life painfully concrete.