Moses’s feelings were strenuous but not sad and he did not remember the skimming fleet at the ten-minute signal before a race or the ruined orchards where he hunted grouse or Parson’s Pond and the cannon on the green and the water of the river shining between the hardware store and the five-and-ten-cent store where Cousin Justina had once played the piano. We are all inured, by now, to those poetic catalogues where the orchid and the overshoe appear cheek by jowl; where the filthy smell of old plumage mingles with the smell of the sea. We have all parted from simple places by train or boat at season’s end with generations of yellow leaves spilling on the north wind as we spill our seed and the dogs and the children in the back of the car, but it is not a fact that at the moment of separation a…

Drinking at Eastern Slope by night,
I sober, then get drunk again.
When I come back, it’s near midnight.
I hear the thunder of my houseboy’s snore,
I knock but no one answers at my door.
What can I do but, leaning on my cane,
Listen to the river’s refrain?

I long regret I am not master of my own.
When can I just ignore the hums of up and down?
In the still night the soft winds quiver
On the ripples of the river.
From now on, I would vanish with my little boat,
For the rest of my life, on the sea I would float.

translated by Xu Yuan-zhong

I raise my cup and invite
The moon to come down from the
Sky. I hope she will accept
Me. I raise my cup and ask
The branches, heavy with flowers,
To drink with me. I wish them
Long life and promise never
To pick them. In company
With the moon and the flowers,
I get drunk, and none of us
Ever worries about good
Or bad. How many people
Can comprehend our joy? I
Have wine and moon and flowers.
Who else do I want for drinking companions?

translated by Kenneth Rexroth

A hundred years are but a butterfly’s dream.
Looking back, I sigh for things past.
Spring comes today;
Tomorrow flowers will fade.
So make haste with the penal cup–
The night is dying, the lamp burning out.

translated by Sherwin S. S. Fu

Oh, about the joy of owning a crab hut at Sung-chiang!
A dish of wild rice and watercress soup make a repast taken in company.
The maple leaves drop,
The flowers of the wild chrysanthemums are dry,
Drunk on a fishing boat one does not feel the cold.

translated by Hellmut Wilhelm

Near the rim of Hsa-sai Mountain, white egrets fly;
Peach blossoms, flowing stream, and perches full grown.
Oh, for a broad-brimmed bamboo hat, and a cloak of straw!
Slanting wind, fine rain, one need not go home.

translated by Irving Y. Lo