Classic Poem

In this age of decadence people love antiques
and willingly submit to deception.
For thousands in cash they buy calligraphies and paintings,
for hundreds they have them remounted.
Old jade tokens missing a corner,
bronze seals decorated with tortoises and dragons;
inkstones made from the tiles of Bronze Sparrow Tower
on lacquered tables,
gold lion incense burners on ivory supports;
a cup, a beaker, or any ancient vessel —
they consult old texts to verify inscriptions.
Far and wide they seek and search,
into old age, as if they were obsessed.
Blood relatives sue each other in the courts,
close friends grow suspicious of each other.
These things cost thousands to those who are rich,
but when you're poor — you wouldn't give a rice cake for them.
Now I have here some ancient antiques
which — alas! — the men of our times do not know.
The Eight Trigrams, drawn by Fu Hsi;
the Appendix to the Changes by King Wen and Confucius;
the Great Plan, based on the Document of Lo River,
transmitted by Yü of Hsia to Chi of Shang;
East Mountain and the Seventh Month:
how variegated in their beauty!
All of these are things of high antiquity,
which appeared in sequence during the Three Dynasties.
They don't cost you a single cent —
your bookshelves are already piled high with them.
And even the least of these treasures
consists of such things as Han Yü's prose
or the poems of Li and Tu.
Use them to nourish your virtue and conduct
and you can expect to live for a hundred years.
Use them to regulate the empire,
and the hundred peoples will return to the age of peace.
But people are unwilling to love this true antiquity;
they follow each other in repeating vulgar ways.
The neighbor to the east owns a Hsüan-te incense burner,
the neighbor to the west, a Ch'eng-hua porcelain!
These blind men treasure vulgar things,
they are the " stupid of the lowest class,
who cannot be changed. "