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With the act of perceiving opening the poem, the closing two lines function as a response to the
perception of the frontier's unending space. Here on the far western border, the mere act of gazing out
across the landscape's periphery causes one's hair to turn white (yi wang tou yu bai 一 望 头 欲 白 )
regardless of any objects perceived by the poet-narrator; in fact, the gaze of the final line is not directed
at any fixed point, implying that perception alone is sufficient for crushing one's spirit and whitening
one's head. The rapid ageing bespeaks a horror that physically alters the body, a terror brought about by
a loss of familiar bearings at the limits of both the world and perception of the world.
The poet-narrator's spatial coordinates are similarly imprecise in “Passing Through the Desert”
(“Guo qi” 过 碛 ), a poem where the earlier discussed “east” and “west” points of perception have
collapsed into an indiscriminate, all encompassing “four directions” (si wang 四 望 ):
黄 沙 碛 里 客 行 迷
四 望 云 天 直 下 低
为 言 地 尽 天 还 尽
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行 到 安 西 更 向 西
Among the yellow sands of the desert, lost while travelling
far from home;
Gazing in all four directions clouds and sky hang straight
down.
It seems that where the earth ends is also the end of the
sky,
But to reach Anxi one still has to travel further west.
Lack of direction is introduced in the first line with the poet-narrator, while travelling far from home,
having lost his bearings (kexing mi 客 行 迷 ). Following this opening, the poet-narrator gazes all around
( 四 望 ) but only sees the clouds and the sky hanging down (yun tian zhi xia di 云 天 直 下 低 ). In this
instance of the poet-narrator focalizing the distant landscape, his perception is unable to possibly
extend out from the frontier eastwards towards the direction of home, and is instead bound by a low
hanging wall of sky and cloud perceived from all directions at once. With the spatial coordinates of the
poet-narrator's gaze being a combination of every direction, perception itself evinces a feeling of
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CSJJZ, p. 83.