Sent To Du Fu Below Shaqiu City
What is it that I've come to now?
High before me: Shaqiu city.
Beside the city, ancient trees;
The sunset joins the autumn sounds.
The Lu wine cannot make me drunk,
Despite Qi's songs, my feelings return.
My thoughts of you are like the Wen's waters,
Mightily sent on their southern journey.
The Cold Clear Spring At Nanyang
A pity it is evening, yet
I do love the water of this spring
seeing how clear it is, how clean;
rays of sunset gleam on it,
lighting up its ripples, making it
one with those who travel
the roads; I turn and face
the moon; sing it a song, then
listen to the sound of the wind
amongst the pines.
The Intruder
The grass of Yen is growing green and long
While in Chin the leafy mulberry branches hang low,
Even now while my longing heart is breaking,
Are you thinking, my dear, of coming back to me?
- O, wind of spring, you are a stranger,
Why do you enter through the silken curtains of my bower?
poem by Li Po, translated by Shigeyoshi Obata
Added by Dan Costinaş
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She Spins Silk
Far up river in Szechuan,
waters rise as spring winds roar.
How can I dare to meet her now,
to brave the dangerous gorge?
The grass grows green in the valley below
where silk worms silently spin.
Her hands work threads that never end,
dawn to dusk when the cuckoo sings.
Li T'ai-po
tr. Hamil
Remembering the Springs at Ch’ih-chou
Peach-tree flowers over rising waters.
White drowned stones, then free again.
Wistaria-blossom on quivering branches.
Clear blue sky. The waxing moon.
How many tight-coiled scrolls of bracken,
On green tracks where I once walked?
When I’m back from exile in Yeh-lang,
There I’ll transmute my bones to gold.
Lines For A Taoist Adept
My friend lives high on East Mountain.
His nature is to love the hills and gorges.
In green spring he sleeps in empty woodland,
Still there when the noon sun brightens.
Pine-tree winds to dust his hair.
Rock-filled streams to cleanse his senses.
Free of all sound and stress,
Resting on a wedge of cloud and mist.
A Mountain Revelry
To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows,
We drained a hundred jugs of wine.
A splendid night it was . . . .
In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed,
But at last drunkenness overtook us;
And we laid ourselves down on the empty mountain,
The earth for pillow, and the great heaven for coverlet.
Parting at a Wine-shop in Nan-king
A wind, bringing willow-cotton, sweetens the shop,
And a girl from Wu, pouring wine, urges me to share it.
With my comrades of the city who are here to see me off;
And as each of them drains his cup, I say to him in parting,
Oh, go and ask this river running to the east
If it can travel farther than a friend's love!
Visiting The Taoist Priest Dai Tianshan But Not Finding Him
A dog's bark amid the water's sound,
Peach blossom that's made thicker by the rain.
Deep in the trees, I sometimes see a deer,
And at the stream I hear no noonday bell.
Wild bamboo divides the green mist,
A flying spring hangs from the jasper peak.
No-one knows the place to which he's gone,
Sadly, I lean on two or three pines.
Visiting A Taoist On Tiatien Mountain
Amongst bubbling streams
a dog barks; peach blossom
is heavy with dew; here
and there a deer can
be seen in forest glades!
No sound of the mid-day
bell enters this fastness
where blue mist rises
from bamboo groves;
down from a high peak
hangs a waterfall;
non knows where he has gone, so sadly I rest,
with my back leaning
against a pine.