The living is a passing traveler;
The dead, a man come home.
One brief journey betwixt heaven and earth,
Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages.
The rabbit in the moon pounds the medicine in vain;
Fu-sang, the tree of immortality, has crumbled to kindling wood.
Man dies, his white bones are dumb without a word
When the green pines feel the coming of spring.
Looking back, I sigh; looking before, I sigh again.
What is there to prize in the life’s vaporous glory?

translated by Shigeyoshi Obata

You cannot hold it . . .
Pretty girls grow old
and indolent; there is an end to spring.
When breeze is warm and moon so fine,
if you can manage yellow gold, buy smiles.
Nurture the tender blossoms there, don’t wait.
No flowers to be plucked
from empty bough.

translated by J.P. Seaton

**though I wouldn’t personally choose the word “indolent” but the poet, or translator, did.

The fisherman’s awakening: spring river’s noon.
A dream cut short by falling petals, floating like silks.
Wine awakened, drunken still, and drunk, he’s still awake.
He smiles upon this world of men, both now and gone.

translated by J.P. Seaton

When the fisherman’s drunk, his straw cloak dances,
searching through drunkenness to find the way home.
Light skiff, the short oars akimbo:
and when he wakes up he never knows where.

translated by J.P. Seaton

Where does the fisherman go for a drink
when his fish and his crabs are sold?
He never sets himself a limit: just keeps on drinking till he’s drunk,
and neither he nor the bartender totes up his tab.

translated by J.P. Seaton

Green tiles, red railings
from a long way off this temple’s a delight.
Take the time to take it in,
then you won’t need to look back, turning
your head a hundred times.

River’s low: rocks jut.
Towers hide in whirling mist.
Don’t roar, don’t rail
against it. The sound would just fade
in that distance.

translated by J.P. Seaton