Blown by the wind, scatter slowly away.
8
Do not ask me to sing.
That belongs to better times; the lute
And my voice cannot agree,
And neither of them agree
With my untuned fortunes.
Music is the child of mirth, not grief;
This grief’s too great for songs and smiling eyes.
The raven’s harsh call, the wolf’s cry,
The midnight screech owl,
Blizzard wind or cracking ice:
That is the only music for this,
Or better: silence;
Not music but silence,
Not the sounding string, but solitude.
9
Do you know where the lemon blossoms blow,
Where golden oranges in foliage glow,
Where the breeze falls from an azure sky,
And the myrtle and laurel stand high?
Do you know the mansion with the white wall,
The blackened chimney and the fire-lit hall?
That is the place I would have you know,
The place where, with you, I would now go.
10
At the end of spring
The flower of the pear tree gathers and turns to fruit;
The swallows’ eggs have hatched.
When the seasons’ changes thus confront the mind
What comfort is there in philosophy?
It can teach me to watch the days and months fly
Without grieving that youth slips away;
If the fleeting world is a dream
What does it matter whether one is young or old.
But ever since the day my friend left my side
And has lived in exile in a far city,
There is one wish I cannot quite abandon:
That from time to time we may meet again.
11
In waters still as a burnished mirror’s face,
In the depths of the river, trout and grayling swim.
Idly I come with my bamboo rod
And hang my hook by the stream’s bank.
A soft breeze blows on my fishing gear,
Gently swaying my three yards of line.
Though my body sits waiting for fish to rise,
My heart has wandered to the land of nothingness.
Long ago a white-headed man
Also fished at this same river-side;
A hooker of men, not of fish,
When seventy years old he caught a king.
But when I cast my hook in the stream
I have no thought of fish or men.
Lacking the skill to capture either prey,
I only bask in the autumn water’s light;
When I tire of this, my fishing also stops,
And I turn homeward for a cup of wine.
12
My house is poor; those that I love have left me;
My body is sick; I cannot join the feast.
There is not a single face before my eyes
As I lie alone in my cottage room.
My broken lamp burns with a feeble flame;
My tattered curtains are crooked and do not meet.
On the doorstep and window sill
I hear the new snow fall.
As I grow older, gradually I sleep less;
I wake at midnight and sit up in bed.
If I had not learned the art of sitting and forgetting,
How could I bear this loneliness?
Stiff and stark my body cleaves to earth;
Unimpeded my mind yields to change.
So has it been through the long years,
Through twenty thousand nights!
13
I hug my pillow and do not speak a word;
In my empty room no sound stirs.
Who knows that, all day a-bed,
I am not ill, nor even asleep?
Turned to jade are the rosy cheeks
That long ago I had as a boy;
To my sick temples the winter frost now clings.
Do not wonder that my body sinks to decay;
Though my limbs are old, my heart is older yet.
14
Washed by the rain, dust and grime are laid;
Skirting the river, the road’s course is flat.
The moon has risen on the last remnants of night;
The travellers’ speed profits by the early cold.
In the silence I whisper a song;
Darkness breeds sombre thoughts.
On the lotus-bank hovers a dewy breeze;
Through the rice-furrows trickles a singing stream.
At the noise of our bells a dog stirs from sleep;
At the sight of our torches a roosting bird wakes.
Dawn glimmers through the misty shapes of trees –
For ten miles, till day at last breaks.
15
When the sun rose I was still in bed;
An early oriole sang in the eaves.
I thought of the royal park’s trees at dawn,
From which the spring birds greeted the king,
When I served there in his retinue.
Pencil in hand, on duty in the palace office,
At the height of spring, when I paused from work,
Morning and evening, was this the voice I heard?
Now in my exile the oriole sings again
In the dull stillness of this far town:
The bird’s note cannot be changed,
All the difference lies in the listener’s heart.
If only he could forget that he lives
Exiled at the world’s end,
The oriole would sound the same as when
Its song filled the palace garden.
16
I dreamed that I was back in the city,
I saw again the faces of friends.
And in my dream, under an April sky,
They led me by the hand to wander among spring’s breezes.
Together we came to the village of tranquillity,
We stopped our horses at the gate of friends;
When they saw us coming, smiles lit their faces.
They pointed at the flowers in the western court,
And opened flasks of wine in the summerhouse.
They said none of us had changed,
They regretted that joy will not stay;
That friends meet only for a while,
Then part again with scarcely time for greeting.
I woke, and stretched out my hands to them:
There was nothing there at all.
17
Here among the river gorges there is no lack of men.
They are people one meets, not people one cares for.
At my front door guests arrive:
They are people one sits with, not people one knows.
When I look up through the lattice, there are clouds and trees;
When I look down at the desktop, there are inkwells and depositions.
I eat, sleep, get up, work, sit in the garden to await the breeze;
But everywhere and all day there is an emptiness.
Beyond the city walls lives a hermit; with him I can be at ease,
For he can drink a flagon of wine, and recite
Long-lined poems while the sun sets,
Finding its way down among tangled winter branches.
Some afternoon, when the clerks have gone home,
At a season when the path by the river bank is dry,
I beg you, take up your staff of bamboo wood
And find your way to my door where the plum trees stand.
18
Heat and cold, dusk and dawn have crowded upon one another;
Suddenly it is many years since I arrived here.
Through my closed doors I hear nothing but the morning and evening drum.
From my upper windows I see the ships that come and go,
In vain the starlings tempt me with their song
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To stray beneath the flowering trees;
In vain the green rushes lure me to sit by the pond.
There is one thing and one alone I never tire of:
Hearing the stream that trickles over stones
And splashes its way among rocks
In the shade of the dark wood.
19
The papers that lie on my desk are simple and few;
My house by the moat is leisurely and still.
In the autumn rain berries fall from the boughs;
At the evening bell the birds return to the wood.
A broken sunlight quivers over the south porch
Where I lie on my couch in idleness.
20
Men’s hearts love gold and silver;
Men’s mouths covet wine and flesh.
Not so the old man of the stream;
He drinks from his gourd and asks nothing more.
South of the stream he cuts firewood and grass,
North of the stream he has four walls and a roof.
Yearly he sows an acre of land,
In spring he drives two yellow calves.
In these things he finds repose;
Beyond these he has neither wish nor care.
By chance I met him at the water’s side;
He took me home and gave me tea.
He asked my rank and pay; doubting my tale
He laughed loud and long, saying,
‘High officials do not sleep in a barn.’
21
Can the single cup of wine we drank this morning
Have made my heart so glad?
This is a joy that comes only from within,
Which those who witness will never understand.
I have two brothers
And grieved bitterly that both were far away;
This spring, back through the high gorges of the river
I came to them safely, ten thousand leagues.
I am freed at last from the thoughts that grieved me,
As though a sword had cut a rope from my neck.
Limbs grow light when the heart has shed its care;
Suddenly I seem to be flying, for very joy,
To the sun-painted clouds and the sky.
22
My friend, drink your cup of wine,
Then set it down and listen to what I say.
Do not sigh that your home is far away,
Do not mind that success seems far away.
Only hope that as long as life lasts
You and I may never be forced to part.
23
There is silence over the peaks.
In all the treetops there is peace;
Hardly a breath of wind.
The birds are silent and still.
Nothing moves, not a dry leaf
Stirs on the grass,
Not a single soft plume of thistle
Floats.
Only wait: soon
You too will rest.
24
Below the hall, beside the steps,
The pine trees grow in irregular array,
Without order, some tall and some low,
The tallest ten roods tall, the lowest ten feet low.
They are like wild things; no one knows who planted them.
They touch the walls of my blue-tiled house,
Their roots are deep in the terrace of white sand.
Every night they are visited by wind and moonlight,
Rain or fine they are free from dust.
In the autumn gales they whisper a private tune,
In the summer sunlight they yield a cool shade.
At the height of spring the fine evening rain
Decorates their leaves with hanging pearls.
At the year’s end, the time of great snow
Burdens their branches with glittering jade.
When the people heard I had bought this house
They mocked, and called me mad
To move all my family here for the sake of a few pines.
And still I hurry to business, my belt buckled
And my sandals covered in dust;
And from time to time my heart reproves me
That I am not fit to be master of my own pine trees,
Who teach their lessons in each season of the year.
25
We had ridden long and were still far from the inn;
My eyes grew dim, and for some moments I dozed.
In my right hand the whip dangled,
In my left hand the reins slackened.
Suddenly I woke and turned to my groom,
Who told me that I slept for ten paces.
Body and mind had changed places;
Swift and slow had turned to their contraries.
For those few steps as I swayed in the saddle
My dream had lasted through aeons of time:
True indeed is the saying of the wise,
That a thousand years are but a moment of sleep.
26
The sun’s early light shines on my house-beams,
The first banging of open doors
Echoes like a drumroll in the courtyard.
The dog lies curled on the stone step
Because the ground is still wet with dew.
On my window sill the birds chatter
To announce that the day is fine.
With lingering fumes of last night’s wine
My head is still heavy;
With new doffing of winter garments
My body feels light and free.
27
I sought the hermit among the mountain pines
And by the brook that rises there.
I asked a child fishing on its bank;
He said, ‘My master has gone to seek for herbs,
He is on this mountain, certainly,
But you cannot see him because of the clouds.’
28
By woods and water, whose houses are these
With high gates and wide-stretching meadows?
From their blue gables gilded fishes hang,
By their red pillars carved courses run.
Their spring arbours, warm with caged mist,
Their autumn yards cold with moonlight,
To the stem of the pine tree amber beads cling;
The willow oozes ruby-red drops.
Who are the masters of these estates?
They are state officers, counsellors and courtiers;
All their lives they have never seen what they own,
But know their possessions from a bailiff’s map only.
29
The western wind has just begun to blow,
Yet already the first leaf flies from the bough.
On the drying paths I walk in my summer shoes,
In the first touch of cold I don my quilted coat.
Through shallow ditches the floods seep away,
Through sparse osiers a slanting light gleams.
In the early dusk, down an alley of green moss,
The garden-boy is leading the geese home.
30
I have finished with burdens and ties. No changes
Disturb the quiet of my mind, or impair my rest.
For ten years now body and mind
Have rested in hermit peace.
And all the more, in these last lingering years,
What I shall need is little:
A single rug to keep me warm in winter,
One meal to last me through the day.
No matter that my house is small;
One cannot sleep in two rooms at once!
No matter that I have few horses,
One cannot ride in two coaches at once!
Few are as fortunate as I am, among the peoples of the world;
Even fools are wise in the affairs of others;
In their own business even sages err.
To have little and to want no more
Is to be rich, and wise, and free.
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31
We are growing old together, you and I,
Let us ask ourselves, what age is like?
The dull eye is closed before night falls,
The idle head is still uncombed at noon;
Propped on a staff we sometimes shuffle
From the southern porch to the garden gate;
Or sit all day behind closed doors.
One dare not look in the mirror’s polished face,
One cannot read small-letter books.
Deeper and deeper grows the love of old friends,
Fewer and fewer one’s dealings with young men.
One thing only, the pleasure of idle talk,
And summoning of memories,
Remains great as ever, when you and I meet.
32
What is the best course for me now,
But to take my belongings to the tavern
And sit there happily with a wine cup.
Let me avoid the company of false hearts,
Let me wash my own heart clean
Of all the stains that worldliness brings;
Let me have no companions
But a flask of wine and a book.
If I lift my cloak above the world’s dust
I shall rise far up, in independence,
Like the crown of the tall cypress.
When I see the cup-bearer’s face
And the wine gleaming in the cup
I feel ashamed of the worldly things I boasted of.
My slight frame is not able to bear this grief,
Now that she is gone: my poor heart cannot bear
The burden of her absence.
Think of me as a carouser in the wine-house,
Do not trouble my grieving heart,
For if I complain others will seek vengeance;
The dust of injury lies on my heart,
Yet I would not sully its bright mirror
Filled with the image of love.
33
Dawn’s breeze returns
And with it the lapwing
Returning from the southern desert;
I hear again the dove’s song
Singing softly of roses;
The tulip who understands the lily’s whispers
Has returned
And the friend whom the poet wronged
Has forgiven him and returns too,
Walking to his door with soft returning tread.
34
I cannot cease desiring until my desire is requited;
Until my mouth has tasted my love’s red mouth,
Or until from these lips that sought her lips
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