Garden. Heavy dew beads and trickles.
Stars suddenly there, sparse, next aren’t.
Fireflies in dark flight flash. Waking
Waterbirds begin calling, one to another.
All things caught between shield and sword,
All grief empty, the clear night passes.
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Clear autumn at headquarters,
I spend the night alone in the river city,using up all of the candles.Sad bugle notes sound through the long nightas I talk to myself;glorious moon hanging in mid-skybut who looks?The endless dust-storm of troublescuts off news and letters;the frontier passes are perilous,travel nearly impossible.I have already suffered ten years,ten years of turmoil and hardship;now…
In front of the temple of Chu-ko Liang there is an old cypress. Its branches
spans its rimy bark withstands the washing of the rain. Its jet-colored toprises two thousand feet to greet the sky. Prince and statesman have long sincepaid their debt to time; but the tree continues to be cherished among men. Whenthe clouds come, continuous vapors link it with the mists of the long WuGorge; and when…
Alone, the wild goose refuses food and drink,
Who feels compassion for that single shadowvanishing in a thousand distant clouds?You watch, even as it flies from sight,its plaintive calls cutting through you.The noisy crows ignore it:the bickering, squabbling multitudes.
zhu men jiu rou chou
Behind the gates of the wealthyfood lies rotting from wasteOutside it’s the poorwho lie frozen to death
Matchless in breeding and beauty,
in this forsaken valley.She is of good family, she says,but her fortune has withered away;now she lives as the grass and trees.When the heartlands fell to the rebelsher brothers were put to death;birth and position availed nothing–she was not even allowedto bring home their bones for burial.The world turns quickly againstthose who have had their…
Evening colors linger on mountain paths.
At the cliff’s edge, frail clouds stayAll night. Among waves, a lone, shudderingMoon. As cranes trail off in flight, silent,Wolves snarl over their kill. I brood onOur wars, sleepless here and, to rightA relentless Heaven and Earth, powerless.