Blue is the water and clear the moon.
He is out on the South Lake,
Gathering white lilies.
The lotus flowers seem to whisper love,
And fill the boatman’s heart with sadness.

translated by Shigeyoshi Obata

High in September’s frontier winds, white
brocade feathers, the Mongol falcon flies

alone, a flake of snow, a hundred miles
some fleeting speck of autumn in its eyes.

translated by David Hinton

Red azalea, smiling
From the cliffside at me,
You make my heart shudder with fear!
A body could smash and bones splinter in the canyon–
Beauty, always looking on at disaster.

But red azalea on the cliff,
That you comb your twigs even in a mountain gale
Calms me down a bit.
Of course you’re not willfully courting danger,
Nor are you at ease with whatever happens to you.
You’re merely telling me: beauty is nature.

Would anyone like to pick a flower
To give to his love
Or pin to his own lapel?
On the cliff there is no road
And no azaleas grow where there is a road.
If someone actually reached that azalea,
Then an azalea would surely bloom in his heart.

Red azalea on the cliff,
You smile like the Yellow Mountains,
Whose sweetness encloses slyness,
Whose intimacy embraces distance.
You remind us all of our…

I did not expect
the honesty within
a heart open
a promise
in the picture
of your eyes
so soon
too soon
for an old heart
grown weary
these many years
from home

Tonight at Fu-chou, this moon she watches
Alone in our room. And my little, far-off
Children, too young to understand what keeps me
Away, or even remember Ch’ang-an. By now,

Her hair will be mist-scented, her jade-white
Arms chilled in its clear light. When
Will it find us together again, drapes drawn
Open, light traced where it dries our tears?

translated by David Hinton

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

1

Long ago you were perhaps
a river flowing down a mountain!
Since then you’ve been flowing,
deepening your bed;
If I could make a river current
understand human feeling,
Then you might know my mind
on coming from so far.

2

You, water with no feeling,
Have you regrets as you flow east?
In my heart are things I cannot express,
Does that make me different from you?

translated by William H. Nienhauser