You ask how long I'll stay from thee;
Suppress those rising fears;
If you should reckon time like me,
Perhaps ten thousand years.

Right eye cloudy, left leg partly paralyzed;
golden scalpels, loadstone water could never effect a cure.
Better to turn my thoughts to Three Vehicle joy,
to know that the hundred ills of this floating life are empty.
I have no son with whom to share a grass hut;
my wife and I grow old together in this place of religious practice.
From now on why bother asking monks to keep me company?
Moon-in-Midair has come home to be companion to a sick old man.

I straighten and adjust robe and headcloth, wipe clean the platform:
one pitcher of autumn water, one incense burner.
Needless to say, cares and delusions must first be gotten rid of;
then when it comes to enlightenment, you try to forget that too.
Morning visits to court long suspended, I've put away sword and pendants;
feasts and outings gradually abandoned, jars and wine cups are put aside.
In these last years, when I'm no more use to the world,
best just to be free and easy, sitting here in the place of practice.

Night grows late, I put poetry aside, breathe a long sigh.
By lamplight tears of old age dampen my white beard.
A scroll of old poems from twenty years ago —
of ten who wrote poems to match them, nine are no more.

Rushing around on morning errands,
for relaxation, my villa in the woods,
but mostly I get to go there only when I'm sick;
it's seldom I enjoy it in good health.
Patches of white — frost invades my temples;
in a yellow flurry the sun drops behind the hills.
Idle times, busy times — both get you through the days,
but busy is nowhere as nice as idle.

Haven't been out the gate for weeks on end —
how do I pass the days, what company do I keep?
Unlatch the cranes' cage and these gentlemen are before me,
open a book and I'm face to face with people of the past.
Learning to still the mind lengthens the life span;
seek nothing outside yourself, nourish the spirit.
When you can do this, this is true practice of the Way!
What need to " conquer devils, " " tame and subdue " the body?

Pagoda tree flowers bright with rain, new autumn in the land;
paulownia leaves wind-tossed, sky verging on evening:
all day in the back office, nothing to do,
the senior librarian, white-haired, sleeps with his head on a book.

High high the white moon climbs above blue groves;
guests gone, monks to their quarters, I'm alone in the deep night.
Rank foods forbidden here, only wine before me,
songs and bells banished, nothing left me but a ch'in .
No object from the vulgar world to confront the eye,
only the sound of the fountain washing clean my mind.
Most of all I love the view east from the dawn pavilion,
Lake T'ai-hu's misted waters, deep deep green.

I remember last year when I was called back to the capital,
three of us on the road home together.
But this life of ours is wholly a thing of dreams,
and past events in no time turn to emptiness.
Shuo-chih's body lies in the Yellow Springs,
Yü-p'ing went like a candle before the wind.
Only Lo-t'ien still alive,
hair gray, now headed east of the Yangtze.

The house is small, a fret to occupants,
mud is deep, the horse stubborn and doltish.
I live east of the avenue, a quiet area,
come home from work in the noonday heat.
The courtyard is cramped, hardly room to plant bamboo,
the wall so high I can't see the mountains.
In a spot like this, what one wants
is a heart broad-dimensioned and serene.