The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter

Ezra Pound - 1885-1972

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.

I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,

I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed,

You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.

By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
   As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

        By Rihaku
Drinking Alone under the Moon” by Li Bai
Among the blossoms waits a jug of wine.
I pour myself a drink, no loved one near.
Raising my cup, I invite the bright moon
and turn to my shadow. We are now three.
But the moon doesn’t understand drinking,
and my shadow follows my body like a slave.
For a time moon and shadow will be my companions,
a passing joy that should last through the spring.
I sing and the moon just wavers in the sky;
I dance and my shadow whips around like mad.
While lucid still, we have such fun together!
But stumbling drunk, each staggers off alone.
Bound forever, relentless we roam:
reunited at last on the distant river of stars.
THE SCHOLAR IN THE NARROW STREET
By Tso Ssŭ

FLAP, flap, the captive bird in the cage

Beating its wings against the four corners.
Depressed, depressed the scholar in the narrow street:
Clasping a shadow, he dwells in an empty house.
When he goes out, there is nowhere for him to go:
Bunches and brambles block up his path.
He composes a memorial, but it is rejected and unread,
He is left stranded, like a fish in a dry pond.
Without — he has not a single farthing of salary:
Within — there is not a peck of grain in his larder.
His relations upbraid him for his lack of success:
His friends and callers daily decrease in number.
Su Ch'in used to go preaching in the North
And Li Ssŭ sent a memorandum to the West.
I once hoped to pluck the fruits of life:
But now alas, they are all withered and dry.
Though one drinks at a river, one cannot drink more than a bellyful;
Enough is good, but there is no use in satiety.
The bird in a forest can perch but on one bough,
And this should be the wise man's pattern.
Sailing Homeward - Chan Fang-shēng

Cliffs that rise a thousand feet

Without a break,
Lake that stretches a hundred miles
Without a wave,
Sands that are white through all the year,
Without a stain,
Pine-tree woods, winter and summer
Ever-green,
Streams that for ever flow and flow
Without a pause,
Trees that for twenty thousand years
Your vows have kept,
You have suddenly healed the pain of a traveller’s heart,
And moved his brush to write a new song.
Shady Shady

SHADY, shady the wood in front of the Hall:

At midsummer full of calm shadows.
The south wind follows summer's train:
With its eddying puffs it blows open my coat.
I am free from ties and can live a life of retirement.
When I rise from sleep, I play with books and harp.
The lettuce in the garden still grows moist:
Of last year's grain there is always plenty left.
Self-support should maintain strict limits:
More than enough is not what I want.
I grind millet and make good wine:
When the wine is heated, I pour it out for myself.
My little children are playing at my side,
Learning to talk, they babble unformed sounds.
These things have made me happy again
And I forget my lost cap of office.
Distant, distant I gaze at the white clouds:
With a deep yearning I think of the Sages of Antiquity.
Clearing at Dawn
The fields are chill, the sparse rain has stopped;
The colours of Spring teem on every side.
With leaping fish the blue pond is full;
With singing thrushes the green boughs droop.
The flowers of the field have dabbled their powdered cheeks;
The mountain grasses are bent level at the waist.
By the bamboo stream the last fragment of cloud
Blown by the wind slowly scatters away.
Spring Prospect Tu Fu

The country is broken, though hills and rivers remain,

In the city in spring, grass and trees are thick.
Moved by the moment, a flower's splashed with tears,
Mourning parting, a bird startles the heart.
The beacon fires have joined for three months now,
Family letters are worth ten thousand pieces.
I scratch my head, its white hairs growing thinner,
And barely able now to hold a hairpin.
Waking From Drunkenness on a Spring Day Li Bai

,Life in the world is but a big dream;

 I will not spoil it by any labour or care.

So saying, I was drunk all the day,

 Lying helpless at the porch in front of my door.

When I awoke, I blinked at the garden-lawn;

A lonely bird was singing amid the flowers.
I asked myself, had the day been wet or fine?

The Spring wind was telling the mango-bird.

  Moved by its song I soon began to sigh,

And, as wine was there, I filled my own cup.
Wildly singing I waited for the moon to rise;

 When my song was over, all my senses had gone.

Ancient Air (39)
Li Bai

I climb up high and look on the four seas,

Heaven and earth spreading out so far.
Frost blankets all the stuff of autumn,
The wind blows with the great desert's cold.
The eastward-flowing water is immense,
All the ten thousand things billow.
The white sun's passing brightness fades,
Floating clouds seem to have no end.
Swallows and sparrows nest in the wutong tree,
Yuan and luan birds perch among jujube thorns.
Now it's time to head on back again,
I flick my sword and sing Taking the Hard Road.
Long Yearning
Li Bai

Long yearning,
To be in Chang'an.
The grasshoppers weave their autumn song by the golden railing of the well;
Frost coalesces on my bamboo mat, changing its colour with cold.
My lonely lamp is not bright, I’d like to end these thoughts;
I roll back the hanging, gaze at the moon, and long sigh in vain.
The beautiful person's like a flower beyond the edge of the clouds.
Above is the black night of heaven's height;
Below is the green water billowing on.
The sky is long, the road is far, bitter flies my spirit;
The spirit I dream can't get through, the mountain pass is hard.
Long yearning,
Breaks my heart.
A Spring Morning (Meng Haoran)
Spring morning arrives without my knowing,
I hear birds chirp everywhere.
After the night of wind and rain,
Who knows how many blossoms have fallen.
 BUYING FLOWERS
by: Po-Chu-I

In the capital, Spring comes late;

The noisy chariots and horses are passing.

They say, "It is the time of the peonies."

So they come together to buy flowers.

Prices, high and low, may change,

But also it depends on how much you buy,

Hundreds shine bright red.

There is a bouquet white as crystal.

Sheltered by curtains overhead.

And constructed on a bamboo framework

Water and set in mud.

These are the old colors, but changed.

Every house boys them according to custom

And nobody thinks wrong of it.

Only an old man from the farm

Coming by chance to the flower market

Lowers his head, deeply sighs

A sigh which no one understands.

Over a single posy of deep-colored flowers

Ten common families might sing!

Quiet Night Thinking/ Contemplation by Li Bai

There is moonlight shining before my bed,

I suspect that there is frost on the ground,

Raising my head, I gaze at the moonlight,

Lowering my head, I think of my home village.

Morning Rain Du Fu
A slight rain comes, bathed in dawn light.
I hear it among treetop leaves before mist
Arrives. Soon it sprinkles the soil and,
Windblown, follows clouds away. Deepened

Colors grace thatch homes for a moment.

Flocks and herds of things wild glisten
Faintly. Then the scent of musk opens across
Half a mountain — and lingers on past noon.
Bamboo Woods by Wang Wei

Alone,
quiet in a bamboo copse,
I linger the lazy hours
             strumming my lute and whistling songs.
Deep in trees,
         hidden by night,
no companion seeks me out
         except the bright-faced moon.
A View of the Han River Wang Wei
With its three southern branches reaching the Chu border,
And its nine streams touching the gateway of Jing,
This river runs beyond heaven and earth,
Where the colour of mountains both is and is not.
The dwellings of men seem floating along
On ripples of the distant sky —
These beautiful days here in Xiangyang
Make drunken my old mountain heart!
Alone and Drinking Under the Moon Li Po
Amongst the flowers I
am alone with my pot of wine
drinking by myself; then lifting
my cup I asked the moon
to drink with me, its reflection
and mine in the wine cup, just
the three of us; then I sigh
for the moon cannot drink,

and my shadow goes emptily along

with me never saying a word;
with no other friends here, I can
but use these two for company;
in the time of happiness, I
too must be happy with all
around me; I sit and sing
and it is as if the moon

accompanies me; then if I

dance, it is my shadow that
dances along with me; while
still not drunk, I am glad
to make the moon and my shadow
into friends, but then when
I have drunk too much, we
all part; yet these are

friends I can always count on

these who have no emotion
whatsoever; I hope that one day
we three will meet again,
deep in the Milky Way.
An Autumn Evening in the Mountains Po Chu I
After rain the empty mountain
Stands autumnal in the evening,
Moonlight in its groves of pine,
Stones of crystal in its brooks.
Bamboos whisper of washer-girls bound home,
Lotus-leaves yield before a fisher-boat —
And what does it matter that springtime has gone,
While you are here, O Prince of Friends?
Night Snow by Po Chu-i
I plunge into bed startled
to find quilt and pillow already cold.

Out my window, I watch

the bright glitter of a new snowfall.

I doze off, knowing winter's

white will pile deep this night.

Now and then, I hear the crack of bamboo

as a branch snaps under snow-weight.
A Lament for my Son Ts’ui Po Chu I
You were a pearl

In the palm of my hand,

My tiny baby boy.

Why is it that I,

A white-haired man of three-score years,

Am left behind,

And you, a child of three,

Must by Heaven's silent, stern decree,

Precede me

To that strange and far-off land

Of death?

My heart is wounded sorely,

But not with a blade of steel;

My old eyes are dimmed and dull,

But not with the dust of earth.

These arms

That held you closely to my breast

Are empty now,

And I mourn, as did Teng Yu of old,

My only son.
Planting Bamboos Po Chu I
Unrewarded, my will to serve the State;
At my closed door autumn grasses grow.
What could I do to ease a rustic heart?
I planted bamboo, more than a hundred shoots.
When I see their beauty, as they grow by the stream-side,
I feel again as though I lived in the hills,
And many a time on public holidays
Round their railing I walk till night comes.
Do not say that their roots are still weak,
Do not say that their shade is still small;
Already I feel that both in garden and house
Day by day a fresher air moves.
But most I love, lying near the window-side,
to hear in their branches the sound of the autumn-wind.