Breach cut in green-moss earth,
it steals a distant flake of sky.
White clouds emerge in mirror;
fallen moon shines below stairs.
translated by David Hinton
Month: October 2014
Rain On The River by Lu Yu
In the fog we drift hither
And yon over the dark waters.
At last our little boat finds
Shelter under a willow bank.
At midnight I am awake,
Heavy with wine. The smoky
Lamp is still burning. The rain
Is still sighing in the bamboo
Thatch of the cabin of the boat.
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
Thought After Snow in Hsiang-yang by Tu Mu
My long-ago life rises into lone thoughts
and drifts windblown–too much for me.
Shoreline sounds echo night restlessly.
Cold lamplight thick with snow glistens.
Three years–a dream so bright and real,
thread stretching away into the furthest
distances. Dawn light on Ch’u Mountain:
no need to climb those wide-open heights.
translated by David Hinton
Goodbye by Tu Mu
It seems the fiercest love is no love at all, in the end.
Sipping wine together, we feel nothing now but absent
smiles. Candles, at least, still have hearts. They grieve
over goodbye, cry our tears for us until dawn-lit skies.
translated by David Hinton
By The Winding River II by Tu Fu
Everywhere petals are flying
And Spring is fading. Ten thousand
Atoms of sorrow whirl away
In the wind. I will watch the last
Flowers as they fade, and ease
The pain in my heart with wine.
Two kingfishers mate and nest in
The ruined river pavilion.
Stone unicorns, male and female,
Guard the great tomb near the park.
After the laws of their being,
All creatures pursue happiness.
Why have I let an official
Career swerve me from my goals?
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
By The Winding River I by Tu Fu
Every day on the way home from
My office I pawn another
Of my Spring clothes. Every day
I come home from the river bank
Drunk. Everywhere I go, I owe
Money for wine. History
Records few men have lived to be
Seventy. I watch the yellow
Butterflies drink deep of the
Flowers, and the dragonflies
Dipping the surface of the
Water again and again.
I cry out to the Spring wind,
And the light and the passing hours.
We enjoy life such a little
While, why should men cross each other?
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
Inscribed on the Tower at Veneration Monastery by Tu Mu
Late-light shadow across thousand-mountain
snows. In cold spring, a hundred-foot tower.
I climb up alone, and then back down alone.
Who can manage such distances of the heart?
translated by David Hinton
Leonard Durso 