Short Poems

Father opens European, Dutch books;
Child reads T'ang, Sung verse.
Sharing this single lamp,
each traces his own source.
Father reads on and never rests,
child, tired, thinks of chestnuts, yams.
I'm ashamed I am, in spirit, so far from father,
who, eighty years of age, has no mist in his eyes.

Standing svelte, green by the Hsiang River:
I meet someone and make several paintings.
If handed down, these will be my descendants;
I have no need to regret my childlessness.

The pagoda-tree casts a deep, deep afternoon shadow;
difficult to have a nap as though I had a lingering hang-over.
In my neighbor's house, who are they, scheming minds alive:
into my dream come the sharp sounds of go stones striking the board.

Embarrassed that my art is known idly in places,
but grateful to your envelope, a new acquaintance.
Instead of writing a reply with my feeble brush,
I've simply drawn a bamboo bush, a short poem appended.

I recently planted a sasanqua, newly transplanted a redbud.
A small space, the autumn garden is now in order.
Also, seeing my neighbor to the south with blooming mums,
I politely begged for some and planted them by my hedge.

The autumn night, limpid, often startles me out of dreams.
Among the trees a crow caws, twice, three times.
The clepsydra, rather slow, adds to my collar's cold.
The sputtering lamp darkens, making the window light.
A couplet, in this idleness, I manage to get.
All feelings are spawned while on the pillow.
Tossing, turning, sleepless, thinking of an old friend,
I happen to see the moon clear, close to the roof.

In my cold room, seeing your verse from thousands of li away,
I first lit incense in the duck-shaped censer.
For days I indulged myself, holding it in my soft hands,
neglecting to brocade mandarin ducks with a needle of gold.

At the ferry no one except a blue weeping willow.
I leave the boat and walk along the sandy path.
The setting sun casts its red to the bottom of the tide,
illuminating a fish that leapt, swimming away.

A half-circle, the soft moon, and it is midnight.
Who is it that lives near a plum tree, in the small clean house?
I see now: a scholar reading, still not going to bed,
a dot of silvery light clear through the blinds.

The hushed night deepening, I can't take to my pillow;
the lamp stirred, I quietly read the women's words.
Why is it that the talented are so unfortunate?
Most are poems about empty beds, husbands missed.