Classic Poem

1

Ten days of wind and rain, depressing darkness!
A family of eight — wife and children — all complaining of hunger.
Surely old Heaven is playing games with me:
no one has come for days to buy the poems I write on fans.

2

My calligraphy, painting, poems, and prose — none of them
are any good,
but somehow I've managed to make a living from them!
How could I dare look down at even a little bit of money, or rice?
At least they will get this gentleman here through another day
of poverty.

3

I clasp my knees, all comfortable with a book:
no thick clothes to wear, no fish to eat.
Other people laugh at me for being so dull at planning my life,
but dullness lies in planning life — I'm really quite happy!

4

A plain plank gate in a red hibiscus hedge,
geese and ducks for neighbors — I live here with my wife
and children.
It's hard to describe the natural happiness of the life we lead —
but there's been no kitchen fire for three days now,
and yet we don't feel hungry!

5

I enjoyed the greatest fame in the capital;
now, clothes hanging loose, I've retired to my old thatched hut.
Don't laugh that there isn't enough room here
for the point of an awl:
thousands of miles of mountains and streams
are born from my brush!

6

With my blue shirt and white hair, old and a little crazy,
making my living from brush and inkstone,
so hard to get anything to eat!
People these days don't even want the rice fields by the lake:
who will ever come to buy the mountains in my paintings!

7

In this distant village, the sound of wind-swept rain
mingles with the cries of roosters;
nothing for the breakfast fires in the kitchen —
I'm ashamed before my wife.
I planned to paint a new scroll of ink bamboo to sell,
but in town now, bamboo shoots are going cheap as mud!

8

Being a scholar — what a dumb way to try to make a living.
Your livelihood depends on your brush and your inkstone.
The days are gone when students would come with gifts of wine,
or you could expect to pay for fish with the poems
that you wrote.