how nice it would be
to talk to someone
who remembers DeNiro
in Bang The Drum Slowly
who saw Mick Jagger dance
who loves Linda Ronstadt
who saw After The Wedding
who is reading Marquez
who has both read and seen
Milagro Beanfield War
to finally
after 6 years of talking
to myself
to have a conversation
on familiar ground

From the walls of Po-ti high in the coloured dawn
To Kiang-ling by night-fall is three hundred miles,
Yet monkeys are still calling on both banks behind me
To my boat these ten thousand mountains away.

translated by Witter Bynner & Kiang Kang-hu

there is that light
in the eyes
that wasn’t there
some weeks before
a phrase maybe
a look a smile
the way you danced down the aisle
a certain stress of an unfamilar word
an analogy used
it could be anything
or everything
but it was something
you did
that changed a little corner
of this world
your job
you think
done
yes, your job
who you are in this world
God’s angels
with your passion
spreading hope
one day at a time

The guitar
makes dreams weep.
The sobbing of lost
souls
escapes through its round
mouth.
And like the tarantula
it spins a large star
to trap the sighs
floating in its black,
wooden water tank.

translated by Carlos Bauer

The crying of the guitar
starts.
The goblets
of the dawn break.
The crying of the guitar
starts.
No use to stop it.
It is impossible
to stop it.
It cries repeating itself
as the water cries,
as the wind cries,
over the snow.
It is impossible
to stop it.
It is crying for things
far off.
The warm sand of the South
that asks for white camellias.
For the arrow with nothing to hit,
the evening with no dawn coming,
and the first bird of all dead
on the branch.
Guitar!
Heart wounded, gravely,
by five swords.

translated by Robert Bly

Meandering these greens, azure all around, you plumb antiquity.
East of the wall, above the river, stands this ancient monastery,

its thatched halls we visited so long ago. You a mountain sage,
I here from Wei River northlands: we sipped wine, wrote poems.

Painted paddle still, I drift awhile free. Then soon, I’m nearing
home, azure walking-stick in hand, my recluse search ending.

Old friends dead and gone, their houses in ruins, I walk through
thick bamboo, deep cloud, each step a further step into confusion.

translated by David Hinton