Gazing a thousand miles
landscape of water and clouds

horizontal sky
a stripe of misty light

I don’t see any return
back to my old hometown

it’s only in my dreams
I visit the Yangtze Delta.

translated by Jiann I. Lin & David Young

Tired, sleepless on my pillow
worried all night long

the windows are still dark
no sign of dawn

in this lonely village
one dog barks all night

the moon wanes
few people on the roads

my thinning hair
has turned bright white

my years of travel have taught me
how to be homesick

out in the empty fields
spinster cicades are buzzing

nothing to show for their labor
nothing accomplished.

translated by Jiann I. Lin & David Young

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

Rapt in wine against the mountain rains,
dressed I dozed in evening brightness,
and woke to hear the watch drum striking dawn.
In dreams I was a butterfly,
my joyful body light.

I grow old, my talents are used up,
but still I plot toward the return . . .
to find a field and take a cottage
where I can laugh at heroes,
and pick my way among the muddy puddles
on a lakeside path.

translated by J.P. Seaton

On a moonlit island bridge, I think of mountain peaks, then
look down and mourn how water slips past. Who can know

distances? Tonight, I hear that sobbing from long ago again,
but gaze at a mountain moon and talk of this island bridge.

translated by David Hinton

Lumen Island and its city walls revealed in this painting: they
remind me how I once moored a boat there at West Pavilion,

but heart and mind given to old age can’t find long-ago times.
I rely on rivers and mountains for what’s ancient and remains.

translated by David Hinton