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

. . .Though the City of Silk be delectable, I would rather turn home quickly.
Such traveling is harder than scaling the blue sky. . .
But I still face westward with a dreary moan.

translated by Witter Bynner & Kiang Kang-hu

When I die,
I will become a rock,
never touched
by compassion, joy or anger.
While being torn down by wind and rain,
It will only whip itself inwards
in eternal, impersonal silence,
and at last forget its own existence;
Floating clouds, distant thunder!
Though it may dream,
it will never sing.
Though broken in pieces,
it will never utter a word.
I will become such a rock.

In rain it opens and falls in wind.
How many days can we see the peach blossom?
This brevity is in the blossom’s nature:
not that the wind has been cruel nor the rain kind.

translated by Kim Jong-gil