Chinese Poems

On Reaching the Ju River Dikes,
Sent to My Friend Lu

Road-weary, giving the horse a break,
I find myself gazing at Ju River dikes.

The Lo River is open now, free of snow.
On Sung peaks, twilight clouds linger,

trailed halfway across empty skies, lit
colours surging elemental and swelling.

I'm sending here this moment of itself-
how it keeps unfurling, unfurling.

Autumn Night, Setting Moon

Poised low in emptiness, a radiant moon
glistens incandescent in a drop of dew.

Trying to settle in, magpies startle away.
Fireflies float through open blinds, cold

shadow sparse in courtyard scholar-trees.
Fulling-stick rhythms tighten next door.

How will we ever meet in a land so vast?
Lingering out emptiness, I gaze and gaze.

A Farewell for Tu Huang

water weaving Ch'u and Wu into a single home village,
you set out on a spring river. It's all so vast and vague,

and your sails: when night falls, they'll rest at anchor
along the edge of heaven, that slice through the heart.

After Visiting Thought-Essance Monastery,
I return with White-Cloud Wang Following
Somewhere Behind

I left high valley long before midday,
and twilight was fading when I got home.

Looking up the mountain road, I find only
oxen and sheep. My gaze grows reverent.

Woodcutters lose each other in darkness,
the evening chill silences a last cricket,

and I still haven't closed my bramble gate.
I keep lingering, expecting you out there.

Out on the Road, Skies Clearing
 though I've left Pa's ridge rain behind,
I'm not free of Shu's muddy slopes

when skies open out, late light aslant,
mountain peaks breaching low clouds.

In grasses, everywhere, rainfall glistens.
Trickles keep stream swelling. Tonight,

a cold moon will light thoughts of home,
aching across such distances, distances.


All poems by Meng Hao-jan, translated by David Hinton.

Waiting for Ch'u Kuang-i, Who Never Arrives

The gates are already open. It's morning.
I rise and listen to passing carts , hoping:

when I hear your crystalline waist-jewels
clittering, I'll hurry out to welcome you.

A monestery bell sounds through gardens.
Sparse rain drifts across the spring city.

Realizing we won't see each other, I gaze
through windows, empty out anticipation.

Farewell

Here in these mountains, our farewell over,
sun sinking away, I close my brushwood gate.

Next spring, grasses will grow green again.
And you, my old friend - will you be back too?

Both poems by Wang Wei, translated by David Hinton.

Hsiang-Yang travels, Thinking of Meng Hao-jan

Emerald Ch'u mountain peaks and cliffs,
emerald Han River flowing full and fast.

Meng's writing survives here, its elegant
ch'i now facets of changing landscape.

But today, chanting the poems he left us
and thinking of him, I find his village

clear wind, all memory of him vanished.
Dusk light fading, Hsiang-yang empty,

I look south to Deer-Gate Mountain, haze
lavish, as if some fragrance remained,

but his old mountain home lost there:
mist thick and forests all silvered azure.

Night in the Palace with Ch'ien Hui

When the water-clock sounds three times, I realize it's midnight.
Lovely wind and cold moonlight everywhere in pine and bamboo,

we sit here in perfect idleness, empty and still, saying nothing:
just two people in the shadows of a medicine tree, just two people.

Visiting the Recluse Cheng

Having fathomed Tao, you went to dwell among simple villages
where bamboo grows thick, opening and closing your gate alone.

This isn't a mission or pilgrimage. I've come for no real reason:
just to sit out on your south terrace and gaze at those mountains.

Reply to Yuan Chen

You write out my poems, filling monastery walls,
and I crowd these door-screens here with yours.

Old friend, we never know where it is we'll meet-
we two duckweed leaves adrift on such vast seas.

All poems by Po Chu-I, translated by David Hinton.