I spend my life
on shores where
white waves roll in:
a fisherman's child,
I have no home.

I beseech you:
may these acts of writing,
and the errors of wild words and
decorative phrases of my life
be reversed
for all future generations,
to honor the Law of the Buddha and
aid in turning the wheel of his teachings.

The three-thousand-fold world exhausts
itself before my eyes.
The twelve-link chain of causation
becomes empty in my heart.

While flowers bloom at the Orchid Bureau,
you bask beneath brocade curtains.

On Mount Lu a night of rain
here in my thatched hut.

Since Prince Qiao left,
the clouds have long vanished.

Some day the sound of his reed pipes
will return to this old valley.

Peach and plum blossoms do not speak:
how many springs have come and gone?

Spring mists leave no traces:
who once lived here?

In a cave a stone bench left behind,
rough winds sweep it in vain.

In the forests a jade table abandoned,
a bird cries alone.

A fine view has no particular master.

Mountains belong to those who love mountains.

On the fifteenth night,
the glow of a new moon.
Two thousand miles away,
the heart of my friend.

If not to you,
to whom might I show
these plum blossoms?
Their color, their scent,
is known only by the knowing.