TAO YUANMING

Returning To Live In The Country

Young, I was always free of common feeling.

It was in my nature to love the hills and mountains.

Mindlessly I was caught in the dust-filled trap.

Waking up, thirty years had gone.

The caged bird wants the old trees and air.

Fish in their pool miss the ancient stream.

I plough the earth at the edge of South Moor.

Keeping life simple, return to my plot and garden.

My place is hardly more than a few fields.

My house has eight or nine small rooms.

Elm-trees and Willows shade the back.

Plum-trees and Peach-trees reach the door.

Misted, misted the distant village.

Drifting, the soft swirls of smoke.

Somewhere a dog barks deep in the winding lanes.

A cockerel crows from the top of the mulberry tree.

No heat and dust behind my closed doors.

My bare rooms are filled with space and silence.

Too long a prisoner, captive in a cage,

Now I can get back again to Nature.


Idle Living

Though life is brief, feeling is everlasting;

That is why man wants to live long.

The sun and moon follow the stars.

The whole world loves this name.

The dew is cold, and the warm wind drops;

The air is penetrating, the day bright.

The departing swallow leaves no shadow;

The returning wild goose brings a lingering cry.

Wine can wash away a hundred woes,

And chrysanthemums set a pattern for old age.

Why should I, a hermit,

Gaze vacantly at the change of seasons?

The ministers are ashamed of their empty grain jars.

The autumn chrysanthemums are alone in their beauty.

I alone sing while fastening my garments.

A feeling of melancholy stirs deep within me.

It is true that there is much amusement in living,

But in idling is there no accomplishment?

Ninth Day, Ninth Month

Slowly autumn comes to an end.

Painfully cold a dawn wind thicks the dew.

Grass round here will not be green again,

Trees and leaves are already suffering.

The clear air is drained and purified

And the high white sky’s a mystery.

Nothing’s left of the cicada’s sound.

Flying geese break the heavens’ silence.

The Myriad Creatures rise and return.

How can life and death not be hard?

From the beginning all things have to die.

Thinking of it can bruise the heart.

What can I do to lighten my thoughts?

Solace myself drinking the last of this wine.

Who understands the next thousand years?

Let’s just make this morning last forever.

To Harmonize With The Poem Of My Friend Tai

An empty boat glides on without oars,

Returning to the infinite.

At the year's start, I gae here and there,

And before I know it, it is already midyear.

Under the southern window, nothing withers,

And the forest is beautiful and luxuriant.

Seasonal rains pour down from the sacred source,

And the color of the dawn is attuned to the warm wind.

We who have come must go;

Man definitely has an end.

While we live each day, waiting for the end

And bending our backs in the fields,

We surely cannot injure the inner self!

Though we meet with change, transformation, danger,

I am neither despondent nor exultant.

If in daily affairs we hold our spirits high,

Then what is the need to seek the sacred mountain tops?

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