After T’ao Ch’ien’s “Drinking Wine” bySu Tung-p’o

This little boat of mine, truly a lone leaf,
and beneath it, the sound of dark swells:

I keep paddling in depths of night, drunk,
pleasures of home, bed and desk,forgotten.

At dawn, when I ask about the road ahead,
I’m already past a thousand ridges rising

beyond ridges. O where am I going here,
this Way forever leaving ever returning?

Never arriving, what can we understand,
and always leaving, what’s left to explain?

translated by David Hinton

Road by Sowol Kim

Again last night
in a country inn
I heard a crow cawing all night.

Today
where shall I be bound?
How many more miles to go?

Up to the mountains,
onto the plains?
No, no place beckons.

No more talk.
To my home in the far north
trains and boats travel.

Tell me,
wild goose in the skies,
is there a sky-road that you travel so freely?

Wild goose in the skies,
look at me standing
at the crossroads.

The road radiates
in many directions
yet none of them can I choose.

translated by Jaihiun Kim & Ronald B. Hatch