Well, then, the last day the sharks appeared.
Dark fins appear, innocent
as if in fair warning. The sea becomes
sinister, are they everywhere?
I tell you, they break six feet of water.
Isn’t it the same sea, and won’t we
play in it any more?
I liked it clear and not
too calm, enough waves
to fly in on. For the first time
I dared to swim out of my depth.
It was sundown when they came, the time
when a sheen of copper stills the sea,
not dark enough for moonlight, clear enough
to see them easily. Dark
the sharp lift of the fins.

Singer of elegies of Yen and Chao
we meet where Chi Meng lived
words can’t exhaust this inch of our hearts
the sun is setting on the road ahead

translated by Red Pine

No, this pleasant afternoon
I cannot stay inside;
this free afternoon
I must go out in the air.

Into the laughing air
opening through the trees,
thousands of loves,
profound and waving.

The roses wait for me
bathing their flesh.
Nothing can keep me here;
I will not stay inside!

translated by Dennis Maloney

Only my face and the sky.
The only universe.
My face, alone, and the sky.

(Between them, the pure breeze,
a fond caress, the only hand
that brings so much plentifulness;
the breeze, always rising and falling.)

Above me, all that is life,
the entire dream within me,
brushing against my senses with its wings,
that he has brought into harmony.

Nothing more.
. . . . . . .Are you perhaps
the breeze that comes and goes
from the sky, love, to my face?

translated by Dennis Maloney & Clark Zlotchew

I wonder why my inlaid harp has fifty strings,
Each with its flower-like fret an interval of youth.
. . . The sage Chuang-tzu is day-dreaming, bewitched by butterflies,
The spring-heart of Emperor Wang is crying in a cuckoo,
Mermen weep their pearly tears down a moon-green sea,
Blue fields are breathing their jade to the sun. . .
And a moment that ought to have lasted for ever
Has come and gone before I knew.

translated by Witter Bynner & Kiang Kang-hu

The night’s lazy, the moon bright. Sitting
here, a recluse plays his pale white ch’in,

and suddenly, as if cold pines were singing,
it’s all those harmonies of grieving wind.

Intricate fingers flurries of white snow,
empty thoughts emerald-water clarities:

No one understands now. Those who could
hear a song this deeply vanished long ago.

translated by David Hinton