To learn to be without desire, you must desire that;
Better to do as you please: sing idleness:
Floating clouds and water running—where’s their source?
In all the vastness of the sea and sky, you’ll never find it.
translated by J.P. Seaton
Yuan Mei
Willow Flowers by Yüan Mei
Willow flowers, snowflakes
The same; they’re feckless—
No matter whose garden they fall in,
They always follow the wind away.
translated by J.P. Seaton
Money by Yüan Mei
There’s something to love in each thing in the world
Except money: that most insipid of all things:
In life, you can’t get it;
In death, you can’t take it.
translated by J.P. Seaton
Spring Day III by Yuan Mei
A hermit’s gate is made of the stuff of brooms,
but sweep as it may, the clouds won’t stay away.
So up through the clouds, for sun I came,
with wine, to this high tower.
At evening, the sun declined
to come on down the mountain with me.
“Tomorrow,” I ask,
“you coming, or not?”
translated by J.P. Seaton
On a Painting of a White-Haired Old Man by Yuan Mei
Who’d paint a white-haired ancient?
I smile. I’d rather be a duck.
If you’re born with your head snow-white already,
no one can laugh and shout, “You’re getting old!”
translated by J.P. Seaton
Remembering by Yuan Mei
The years, their months
turn, grave and slow, their
fall and spring, again.
Mountain flowers, mountain leaves and
each time’s new.
Sometimes I sit alone
and smile upon the child I was,
in memory now distant
and a friend.
translated by J.P. Seaton
