Funny–I never could keep my mouth shut;
it gets worse the older I grow.
The long river loops the town–fish must be tasty;
good bamboo lines the hills–smell the fragrant shoots!
An exile, why mind being a supernumerary?
Other poets have worked for the Water Bureau.
Too bad I was no help to the government
but still they pay me in old wine sacks.
translated by Burton Watson
Faint wind rustles reeds and cattails;
I open the hatch, expecting rain–moon floods the lake.
Boatmen and water birds dream the same dream;
a big fish splashes off like a frightened fox.
It’s late–men and creatures forget each other
while my shadow and I amuse ourselves alone.
Dark tides creep over the flats–I pity the cold mud-worms;
the setting moon, caught in a willow, lights a dangling spider.
Life passes swiftly, hedged by sorrow;
how long before you’ve lost it–a scene like this?
Cocks crow, bells ring, a hundred birds scatter;
drums pound from the bow, shout answers shout.
translated by Burton Watson
From the side it is a range; straight on, a peak.
Far, near, high, low, it never looks the same.
I can’t see Mount Lu’s true face
because I’m on the mountain.
translated by Tony Barnstone & Chou Ping
A broken moon hangs from a gaunt parasol tree.
The water clock has stopped, and people hush into sleep.
Who sees a hermit like me passing alone
like a shadow of a flying wild goose?
Startled and soaring off, I look back
with grief no one understands,
going from branch to branch, unwilling to settle,
and landing at last on a cold and desolate shoal.
translated by Tony Barnstone & Chou Ping
Six years the moon shone at mid-autumn;
five years it saw us parted.
I sing your farewell song;
sobs from those who sit with me.
The southern capital must be busy,
but you won’t let the occasion pass:
Hundred-league lake of melted silver,
thousand-foot towers in the pendant mirror–
at third watch, when the songs and flutes are stilled
and figures blur in the shade of trees,
you return to your north hall rooms,
cold light glinting on the dew of leaves;
calling for wine, you drink with your wife
and tell the children stories, thinking of me.
You have no way of knowing I’ve been sick,
that I face the pears and chestnuts, cup empty,
and stare east of the old riverbed
where buckwheat blossoms spread their snow.
I wanted to write a verse to your last year’s song
but I was afraid my heart would break.
translated by Burton Watson
The hundred rivers day and night flow on,
we and all things following;
only the heart remains unmoved,
clutching the past.
I recall when we stayed at Huai-yüan Stop,
door shut against fall heat,
eating boiled greens, studying,
wiping away the sweat, you and I.
The west wind suddenly turned cold;
dried leaves blew in the window.
You got up for a heavier coat
and took hold of my hand:
We won’t be young for long–
I needn’t tell you.
Probably we’ll have to part,
hard to tell when success may come–
even then I felt a chill of sorrow,
and now when both of us are old–
too late to look for the Way.
This fall I began talks to buy some land;
if I build a house, it should be done by spring.
Nights at Snow Hall, in wind and rain,
already I hear you talking to me.
translated by Burton Watson
Seven thousand miles away, a gray-haired man;
eighteen rapids, one little boat:
hills recall Hsi-huan–thoughts roam far away;
“fearful” they call this place–it makes me want to cry.
A long wind follows us, bellying the sail;
rain-fed current bears the boat through rippled shallows.
With my experience, they ought to make me official boatman–
I know more of rivers than merely where the ferries cross.
translated by Burton Watson
I
Black clouds, soaring ink, nearly blot out these mountains.
White raindrops, skipping pearls, skitter wildly into the boat,
then wind comes across furling earth, scatters them away,
and below Lake-View Tower, lakewater suddenly turns to sky.
II
Setting animals loose–fish and turtles–I’m an exile out here,
but no one owns waterlilies everywhere blooming, blooming.
This lake pillows mountains, starts them glancing up and down,
and my breezy boat wanders free, drifts with an aimless moon.
translated by David Hinton
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
The water lilies of summer are gone. They are no more.
Nothing remains but their umbrella leaves.
The chrysanthemums of Autumn are fading.
Their leaves are white with frost.
The beauty of the year is only a solemn memory.
Soon it will be winter and
Oranges turn gold and the citrons green.
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
Being Present for the Moment
Website storys
Illustration, Concept Art & Comics/Manga
Singer, Songwriter and Author from Kyoto, Japan.
Singer, Songwriter and Author from Kyoto, Japan.
An online activist from Bosnia and Herzegovina, based in Sarajevo, standing on the right side of the history - for free Palestine.
A place where I post unscripted, unedited, soulless rants of a insomniac madman
Dennis Mantin is a Toronto-based writer, artist, and filmmaker.
Finding Inspiration
Off the wall, under the freeway, over the rainbow, nothin' but net.
An 'erm, what I doing with my life?' cabaret.
Artist by choice, photographer by default, poet and author by accident.
At Least Trying Too
A Journey of Spiritual Significance
Life in islamic point of view
Through the view point of camera...
L'essenziale è invisibile e agli occhi e al cuore. Beccarlo è pura questione di culo
In Kate's World
Leonard Durso 