Short Poems

In front of my horse's head, I see Red Heart Station,
thatched roofs up and down, half of them wine shops!
Swaying gently beyond the bridge of vermilion railings,
willows — some branches hanging limp, snapped by the west wind.

The immortal with his bamboo cane
journeys far past Lin-ch'iung.
If he hangs the cane on the wall, a windstorm will blow,
and the cane turn into a dragon.

I wake from a nap, light clouds
fill the gullyside;
cows and sheep at sunset are coming down the southern slope.
Wealth and status in this floating life
are really worth nothing at all:
it's just like bustling ants that live inside a single stump.

I return from my second T'ien-t'ai trip:
again, no seven hundred years have gone by!
Meeting me at the door, my wife laughs:
" I guess you didn't become an immortal! "

Kissing Helena, together
With my kiss, my soul beside it
Came to my lips, and there I kept it,--
For the poor thing had wandered thither,
To follow where the kiss should guide it,
Oh, cruel I, to intercept it!

The wind can no more be seen
than an echo in the mountains.

In everything,
we judge what is, what is not,
only by outer form.

Even my sleeves are dampened
by dew on the grassy roadside.

At Uchino Fields
I look out on the old site
of the palace grounds.

Ah, so cold a moon —
it makes me wish for someone
to come and visit.

From a temple in the fields,
a far bell in the autumn night.

Let the price of my offense
be whatever it must be!

Still there is the moon
over the snowy hunting grounds
in the faint light of dawn.

Lament him, Mauchline husbands a',
He aften did assist ye;
For had ye stayed whole years awa',
Your wives they ne'er had missed ye.
Ye Mauchline bairns, as on ye pass
To school in bands thegither,
O tread ye lightly o his grass--
Perhaps he was your father.