At evening I make it down the mountain.
Keeping company with the moon.
Looking back I see the paths I’ve taken
Blue now, blue beneath the skyline.
You greet me, show the hidden track,
Where children pull back hawthorn curtains,
Reveal green bamboo, the secret path,
Vines that touch the traveller’s clothes.
I love finding space to rest,
Clear wine to enjoy with you.
Wind in the pines till voices stop,
Songs till the Ocean of Heaven pales.
I get drunk and you are happy,
Both of us pleased to forget the world.
Reaching the Hermitage - 下终南山过斛斯山人宿置酒
Lament of the Frontier Guard - 古风之十四·胡关饶风沙
By the North Gate, the wind blows full of sand,
Lonely from the beginning of time until now!
Trees rail, the grass goes yellow with autumn.
I climb the towers and towers
to watch out the barbarous land:
Desolate castle, the sky, the wide desert.
There is no wall left to this village.
Bones white with a thousand frosts,
High heaps, covered with trees and grass;
Who brought this to pass?
Who has brought the flaming imperial anger?
Who has brought the army with drums and with kettle-drums?
Barbarous kings.
A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn,
A turmoil of wars-men, spread over the middle kingdom,
Three hundred and sixty thousand,
And sorrow, sorrow like rain.
Sorrow to go, and sorrow, sorrow returning.
Desolate, desolate fields,
And no children of warfare upon them,
No longer the men for offence and defence.
Ah, how shall you know the dreary sorrow at the North Gate,
With Rihaku’s name forgotten,
And we guardsmen fed to the tigers.
Chokan Narrative Song - 长干行
My hair was at first covering my brows
Breaking flower branches I was frolicking in front of our gate.
When you came riding on bamboo stilts
And going about my seat, you played with the blue plums.
Together we dwelt in the same Chokan village.
And we two little ones had neither mutual dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I became your wife -
Bashful I never opened my face (I never laughed)
but lowering my head I always faced toward a dark wall ashamed to
see anybody – she sat in dark corners
And though a thousand times called, not once did I look around….
At fifteen I first opened my brows
And so I desired to live and die with you even after death.
I always had in me the faith of holding to pillars
And why should I think of climbing the husband looking out terrace?
At 16, however, you had to go far away.
towards Shoku passing through the difficult place of Yentotai at Kuto.
The ship must be careful of them in May.
Monkeys cry sorrowful above heaven.
Your footsteps, made by your reluctant departure, in front of our gate
one by one have been grown up into green moss.
These mosses have grown so deep that it is difficult to wipe them away.
And the fallen leaves indicate autumn wind which (to my thought only)
appears to come earlier than usual.
It being already August, the butterflies are yellow.
And yellow as they are, they fly in pairs on the western garden grass.
Affected by this, (absence) my heart pains.
The longer the sbsence lasts, the deeper I mourn, my early fine pink face,
will pass to oldness, to my great regret.
If you be coming down as far as the Three Narrows sooner or later.
Please let me know by writing
For I will go out to meet, not saying that the way be far,
And will directly come to Chofusha.
Love Seeds - 相思
The red bean grows in southern lands.
With spring its slender tendrils twine.
Gather for me some more, I pray,
Of fond remembrance ’tis the sign.
Green Mountain - 山中问答
You ask me why I live on Green Mountain –
I smile in silence and the quiet mind.
Peach petals blow on mountain streams
To earths and skies beyond Humankind.