I love this T’ung-kuan joy. A thousand
years, and still I’d never leave here.
It makes me dance, my swirling sleeves
sweeping all Five-Pine Mountain clean.
translated by David Hinton
Month: October 2014
9/9, On Tzu-chou City Wall by Tu Fu
This night of yellow-blossom wine
Finds me old, my hair white. Joys
I ponder lost to youth, I look out
Across distances. Seasons run together.
Brothers and sisters inhabit desolate
Songs. Heaven and Earth fill drunken eyes.
Warriors and spears, frontier passes. . . .
All day, thoughts have gone on and on.
translated by David Hinton
K’uei-chou by Tu Fu
Above K’uei-chou’s wall, a cloud-form village. Below:
wind-tossed sheets of falling rain, a swollen river
Thrashing in the gorge. Thunder and lightning battle.
Kingfisher-gray trees and ashen ivy shroud sun and moon.
War horses can’t compare to those back in quiet pastures.
But of a thousand homes, a bare hundred remain. Ai–
Ai–the widow beaten by life’s toll, grief-torn,
Sobbing in what village where on the autumn plain?
translated by DAvid Hinton
Song of the Merchant by Li Po (Li Bai)
On heaven’s wind, a sea traveler
wanders by boat through distances.
It’s like a bird among the clouds:
once gone, gone without a trace.
translated by David Hinton
Gazing into Antiquity in Yüeh by Li Po (Li Bai)
Kou Chien shattered Wu, then returned to his Yüeh kingdom.
Noble warriors home again boasting brocade robes, palace
women like blossoms filled springtime galleries here.
There’s nothing left now–only quail breaking into flight.
translated by David Hinton
On the Wall-Tower above K’uei-chou at Night, Thinking of Tu Fu by Lu Yu
Done advising emperors, hair white–no one cared about
old Tu Fu, his life scattered away across rivers of the west,
chanting poems. He stood on this tower once, and now he’s
gone. Waves churn the same isolate moon. Inexhaustible
through all antiquity, this world’s great dramas just rise
and sink away. Simpleton and sage alike return in due time.
All these ice-cold thoughts, who’ll I share them with now?
In depths of night, gulls and egrets lift off sand into flight.
translated by David Hinton
the corner of 12th Street & 4th Avenue
I’ve been carrying this memory
for weeks now
ever since I walked past
your old building
on my way back
from The Strand
your long dark hair
the way you moved
on top of me
those nights
in my loft
crouching there
half Cherokee princess
doing a dance
later in The Village
hearing Tracy Nelson sing
that voice
shivers down my spine
and you swaying
eyes half closed
your hand in mine
and I thought
I should never
let you go
but foolish me
holding the world
in my hands
and letting it
slip away
even your painting
of sunflowers
lost over the years
all that’s left
this old address
an image
slipping in and out
of memory
Looking at a Map of Ch’ang-an by Lu Yu
My hair’s turning gray, but this devotion to our country remains.
South of the peaks, I’ve been gazing north into southern mountains
all year. To mount a horse, spear athwart: that’s where my heart is,
laughing at those chicken-shits digging moats around our capital. . .
Sun sinks away. Smoke comes windblown over ridges. It’s autumn,
and the sound of watchmen banging cookpots fills tumbling clouds.
Ravaged fathers in Ch’ang-an country go on grieving and looking
looking for the emperor’s armies coming back through the passes.
translated by David Hinton
At Cloud-Gate Monastery, Sitting Alone by Lu Yu
Northern mountains, and southern, too–I’ve wandered them all,
and if I look back, I see sixty-seven years of springtime festivals.
Today, given this far away into old age, all battered and broken,
I sit alone, lit incense fragrant, and listen to the sound of water.
translated by David Hinton
The Small Pond by Yang Wan-li
A spring’s eye of shadow resists even the slightest flow.
Among tree shadow, its lit water adorns warm clear skies.
Spiral of blades, a tiny waterlily’s clenched against dew,
and there at the very tip, in early light, sits a dragonfly.
translated by David Hinton
Leonard Durso 