I remember long ago when you and I were boys;
each year we dropped our books and raced to the fair.
Peddlers outdid each other hawking goods;
peasants stood gaping, ripe to be cheated–
when your poem came it brought back those times again.
I grieve less for home than for the years that are lost.

translated by Burton Watson

I only hear a bell beyond the mist,
can’t see the mist-wrapped temple.
The man secluded there never stops walking–
dew from the grass soaks his straw sandals–
nothing but the mountaintop moon
each night to light his comings and goings.

translated by Burton Watson

This is my third Cold Food Festival
since I was exiled to Huang-chou.

Each parting spring, each year, I grieve.
Nevertheless, each passes–no regret.

This year there’s pestilential rain,
the past two months dark as autumn.

I lie still, listening to cherry blossoms fall
into snow, pink and growing muddy.

Of what steals things in the dark,
the strangest arrives at midnight:

as though a young man went to bed
only to wake and find his hair turned white.

translated by Sam Hamill

Drank tonight at Eastern Slope, sobered up, drank again;
got home somewhere around third watch.
The houseboy snores like thunder;
I bang the gate but nobody answers.
Leaning on my stick, I listen to river sounds.

Always it irks me–this body not my own.
When can I forget the world’s business?
Night far gone, wind still, river creped in ripples:
I’ll leave here in a little boat,
on far waters spend the years remaining.

translated by Burton Watson

From the side, a whole range; from the end, a single peak;
far, near, high, low, no two parts alike.
Why can’t I tell the true shape of Lu-shan?
Because I myself am in the mountain.

translated by Burton Watson