Short Poems

On the empty mountain, seeing no one,
Only hearing the echoes of someone's voice;
Returning light enters the deep forest,
Again shining upon the green moss.

Salangadou, Salangadou
Salangadou Salangadou,
“Oh, where is my darling gone?”
Salangadou, Salangadou.

One, two, three, four, five!
“Once I caught a fish alive!”
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten!
“Then I let it go again.”
“Why did you let it go?”
“Because it bit my finger so.”
“Which finger did it bite?”
“This little finger on my right!”

O strange devices that alone divide
The seër from the seen—
The very highway of earth's pomp and pride
That lies between
The traveller and the cheating, sweet delight
Of where he longs to be,
But which, bound hand and foot, he, close on night,

At the mouth of Wu-ling Stream,
petals bright like clouds;
in a boat I follow them,
more and more inspired.
Then return to my little home—
the feeling still with me:
brushtip filled with springtime rain
I paint this flowering peach.

On misty waters, vast and vague,
floating in a painted boat.
From a stone railing along the bank,
gazing at the cold sky.
One note from the jade flute—
moon of a thousand autumns;
scattering, scattering, plum blossoms
over the twelve bridges.

My bed concealed by a folding screen,
bamboo desk aslant,
I lie and watch the year's new swallows
arrive at my humble home.
Living at leisure, in my mind
is not one troublesome thought:
watching rain, my only worry—
it may damage the apricot bloom.

The mountain is the father of the clouds,
the clouds are the children of the mountain.
They lean against the mountain all day long
and the mountain does not even seem to know.

Master Mo Tzu and Master Lao Tzu
had no method for turning back old age,
but for the beauties of the Imperial Gardens
it was quite commonplace.
And now you too speak of the Book of Cosmetics—
it can give someone with wrinkled chicken-skin
the complexion of a phoenix!

In the distance
a sparrow flock flies.
In the flight of their group
something bursts incessantly,
something keeps exploding incessantly.
Bloody afterglow of the harvest day!
The earth shines upside down
in the heavens.