The boatman of Ts’ang-lang is quite old,
But his heart is as clean as flowing water.
He never talks about where he lives,
And nobody knows exactly what his name is.
At dawn he cooks on the riverbank;
Nightfalls, he glides into the rushes and sleeps.
He sings, too, one song after another,
And he holds in hand a bamboo pole:
The line at the end of the fishing pole
Is more than ten feet long.
He rows and rows, following where the river goes,
And he doesn’t have a permanent abode.
How can anyone in the world imagine
What the old man really thinks?
The old man looks for what he himself thinks fit,
And he never cares about the fish.

translated by C.H. Wang