English

Just a few feet away, a temple from the Six Dynasties,
pines and cedars shading its low walls.
Wild monkeys steal offerings to Buddha,
and mountain birds imitate the way people speak.
The stones here are imbued with spirit — even on clear days
they are moist.
The stream has a voice — in the utter silence
it keeps babbling.
My worldly mind has long since become void;
this place is my Jetavana monastery.

I've given up poetry — I have no new manuscripts.
I've stopped playing the lute — it's hidden in its box.
Mushrooms are growing in the mortar
where I used to pound herbs.
Lichens have covered the spade which once dug flower-beds.
The pathway is full of puddles — I'm too lazy to sweep them away.
The garden is overgrown — I'm too tired to pull out the weeds.
And I'm fearful of questions about my past life:
before people have even opened their mouths,
I start to feel ashamed.

I planned to get drunk to ease my sadness,
but my sadness just increased when I got drunk!
I've been returned to my home province, but I still seem
to be a traveler;
the older I get, the more I feel like a monk.
Impressions for poems? — flute music carried from the tower
by the wind.
Sounds of chessmen? — from the lamplit boat in the snow.
Don't think this life is unbearable:
the hermit-farmer can take it all.

There was no reason to expect sadness
to visit my little studio.
May I ask, who escorted sadness here,
who introduced it?
But no, it's just that the old year
never took its sadness away —
it's not that the new year
brought in a new supply.

As old age approaches
my faculties grow numb;
I do things alone,
people think I'm strange!
The frightened fish
is saddened by the net,
the tired bird
cannot find a roost.
My wife and children
are tired of my poems,
my clothing lets through
the chill of ice and snow.
Selling my writings,
still a traveler through life,
have I betrayed my pledge
to become a hermit
at Deer Gate Mountain?

A man who lives by the sea tells of a young boy who, preparing to eat some candy, tied the string of his kite around his waist. Suddenly, a great wind started to blow, sweeping the kite off toward the sea. The boy fell to his death. When his body was recovered, the candy was found still clutched in his hand.
(The kite speaks:)

When the wind is gentle
and I want to rise
I cannot rise.

When the wind is strong
and I want to land
I cannot land.

Willow catkins beyond the garden wait for evening tides;
across the stream, leaves of peachtrees
border the red bridge.
It is dusk: as I gaze in concentration
at springtime like a river,
beyond the T-pattern blinds of the Ting Family house
it is the Six Dynasties again.

Pavilions of dance, terraces of song,
clusters of lovely silks!
Yet now, no traces of visitors,
only springtime wind.
" Treading the Green, " unlimited
feelings of lamentation
all absorbed into the setting orb
of the Southern Dynasties.

Narcissus and chrysanthemum —
lovely shapes together;
she places them in a porcelain vase,
two or three of each.
Bending low beside the little window
in flickering lamplight shadows,
my jade one has risen from her sick bed,
braving the cold air.

Clusters of cold-weather blossoms,
standing quietly:
each branch weighted with mottled beauty now.
I think of consulting you for tips on flower arrangement —
but here they are before my eyes, in lamplight,
against a white wall.