Drunk at night in Dongpo.
I sober, then drink once more;
I return at three A.M.
To hear boy's thunderous snores.
I knock but there's no answer --
Lean on my staff and listen
To water, and feel my regrets
As ripples in river glisten.
I could vanish in this boat,
And see out my life afloat.
Note: The Song Dynasty poet Su Shi [苏轼] was also known as Dongpo [東坡] or Zizhan [子瞻.]
Being thirsty,
I filled a cup with water,
And, behold! -- Fuji-yama lay upon the water,
Like a dropped leaf!
A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and
nothing strange a single hurt color and an
arrangement in a system to pointing. All
this and not ordinary, not unordered in not
resembling. The difference is spreading.
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down
in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
Wen-Tzu by Lao-Tzu
In this short Life that only lasts an hour
How much - how little - is within our power
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah
Smoke slowly rises from sodden woods;
Millet 's steamed to feed the fieldhands;
Egrets fly over foggy paddies;
Hidden birds sing from lush tree stand.
Mountain hikers study hibiscus,
Under dewy pines chew sunflower seeds,
Give mat space to any old traveler.
Gull and I: wary of each other's deeds.
Original Poem in Simplified Chinese:
积雨空林烟火迟， 蒸藜炊黍饷东菑。
漠漠水田飞白鹭， 阴阴夏木啭黄鹂。
山中习静观朝槿， 松下清斋折露葵。
野老与人争席罢， 海鸥何事更相疑？
Among ten thousand writing styles,
There's no one standard or measure.
The styles: many, muddled, and free --
Form, the unattainable treasure.
Talent in word-wrangling shows skill.
Idea conveyance shows craft.
Writers strive 'twixt have and have not --
Unyielding in shallow or deep draught.
An escape artist of fine lines --
Yet time and space consume in kind.
Intricacy excites the eye,
But frugality soothes the mind.
One of few words is not confined.
Verbose writers drift the Undefined.
The original in Simplified Chinese:
体有万殊，物无一量。
纷纭挥霍，形难为状。
辞程才以效伎，意司契而为匠。
在有无而黾勉，当浅深而不让。
虽离方而遯员，期穷形而尽相。
故夫夸目者尚奢，惬心者贵当。
言穷者无隘，论达者唯旷。
Tiger Riding for Beginners 