Short Poems

I call myself the Green Lotus Man;
I am a spirit exiled from the upper blue;
For thirty years I've hid my fame in wine shops.
Warrior of Lake Province, why must you ask about me?
Behold me, a reincarnation of the Buddha of Golden Grain!

Cuckoo! for melancholy me
Oh! make still deeper loneliness.

Oh! cormorant fishing-boat so gay,
And then again so melancholy!

She, a Tung-yang girl, stands barefoot on the bank,
He, a boatman of Kuei-chi, is in his boat.
The moon has not set.
They look at each other — broken-hearted.

She is gathering lotus in the river of Yeh.
She spies a passer-by, and turns round,
Singing her boat song.
She laughs, and hides away among the lilies;
And seeming shy, she will not show her face again.

Cock-crow, the Purple Road cold in the dawn;
Linnet songs, court roofs tinted with April;
At the Golden Gate morning bell, countless doors open,
And up the jade steps float a thousand officials
With flowery scabbards. . . . Stars have gone down;
Willows are brushing the dew from the flags —
And, alone on the Lake of the Phaenix, a guest
Is chanting too well The Song of Bright Spring .

The wild-geese in the firmament, —
These are Dutch letters sideways stretching.

While the autumn moon is pouring full
On a thousand night-levels among towns and villages,
There meet by chance, south of the river,
Dreaming doubters of a dream ...
In the trees a wind has startled the birds,
And insects cower from cold in the grass;
But wayfarers at least have wine
And nothing to fear — till the morning bell.

The moon, the flow'rs, ah! now's the time
To learn the third name of the set.

There's a gleam of green in an old bottle,
There's a stir of red in the quiet stove,
There's a feeling of snow in the dusk outside —
What about a cup of wine inside?