Spring breezes erase the flowers,
leaving me in a state of yin.

This quiet downhill road leads by
a half-hidden bower where I’ll make my bed.

Straw sandals, a walking stick–
I wander the world alone,

only a few northern birds pass by
like the memory of a beautiful song.

translated by Sam Hamill

Hair whiter still, I ache to see those long-ago northlands,
but keep to this refuge: goosefoot staff, windblown trees.

Pity the poor moon: all that bright beauty, and for whom?
It’s dusk. Countless mountains face each other in sorrow.

translated by David Hinton

Knowing lifetimes are like dream, I search for nothing now.
Searching for nothing, a mind is perfectly empty, perfectly

quiet, and so deep in dream it traces borderlands of dream
clear through river and shoreline sands to the end of dream.

translated by David Hinton

Faint shadow, a house, and traces of rain.
In courtyard depths, the gate’s still closed

past noon. That lazy, I gaze at moss until
its green-azure comes seeping into robes.

translated by David Hinton

Getting this old isn’t much fun,
and it’s worse stuck in bed, sick.

I draw water and arrange flowers,
comforted by their scents adrift,

scents adrift, gone in a moment.
And how much longer for me?

Cut flowers and this long-ago I:
it’s so easy forgetting each other.

translated by David Hinton

Morning fire, sunlit window, a bowl of rice gruel: mirror
quiet of a pond no fish troubles, we face each other, then

leave sage temples and mountain forests far behind, our
farewell a ch’an sky, its clarity a place we dwell together.

translated by David Hinton

My lame donkey hates the stony road
up there, and I’m done with big climbs.

It seems forever since I saw you, my old
monk friend. Our youth suddenly gone,

I keep following morning clouds away,
then race evening birds back into this

valley of pines all shadowed dark. Here,
I know you in the distances between us.

translated by David Hinton