Eight times the autumn weather
has drenched with rain
those grasses that wave
green on your grave.
What friends remain
have grown old together
Three times my own old bones
have passed through illness.
My hair is white.
You, shut from light,
lie in a stillness
made of clay and stones
Do you know or not know
if one can return
to the world of men?
Did you know when
Han-lang came in turn
to the springs below?
You came last night:
or so I dreamed.
The sweetness like a cloud drifted—
flickered and shifted.
Yet to meet you seemed
I had seen the faces
first, of old friends:
but then younger, in a band
rode through the tilled land
where Ch’ang-an ends,
to bare spring places.
Yüan Chên’s gate.
Good, we agreed to call.
Almond and peach had starred
the Western Courtyard—
half ready to fall,
half inclined to wait
You were more mine
than any, that I knew.
And you smiled to see me come,
and pointed to some
blossom within view:
then opened wine.
You seemed to say
neither of us had changed,
or could change or be estranged,
though years wore away
for which absence was foretold:
We would still ride
or walk, when the snows melt,
forgetting Cap and Belt—
or side by side
sit talking and drinking on,
and rhyming until dawn.
It should not be rare,
you said, for me to call …
When I woke, I could not doubt
you were still there,
and put my hand out:
there was nothing at all
Wise men maintain
we are dream-ridden in this Fleeting
World, which is no more kind
to our love and pain
then to mere blind
self-serving and competing
To be wise with them,
as eggs hatch and birds take wing
like summer and our life,
we should contemn
desire and strife.
leagues away, I thus
had reasoned with my will,
but quite in vain.
One wish, for us
at times to meet again,
I could never kill
And now when my
old body and soul were best
be numb and sleep,
the thought of you, Wei-
chih, is enough to keep
them both from rest …
I hear my servant say
‘Master, rise from bed:
but it is cold today—
sir, stay at home.’
He leaves me the bowl and comb,
when I turn my head
My pillow has a tear-stain.
‘Shut in all day’
I think ‘with this old pain’,
and stare in the bowl.
But some strange joy of soul
shines through my dismay.
I think of waking
in the country inn,
knowing that we would meet.
Swallows were making
high up, a sweet
faint crazy din
Lying quite still,
one hand above
my eyes, the palm turned up,
I felt myself fill
like a wine-cup
with our new love
I thought of meeting—
two days to wait:
then the city, Red Towers,
your smile and greeting.
We would talk for hours,
drink and sit late.
The bare room and ceiling
were already light,
and bird-clear sky
spread wide and bright…
How calm the feeling—
Calm, so happiness
and sadness mix here—
so make all things clear—
so, like an elixir
change our awareness!
Yes, I can see it here,
wash, till the ink ran,
what the dull world taught:
too many clever
young men had sought
fortune in Ch’ang-an—
and might miss it forever.
We had to forget—
ride in early May
to an old temple, say,
with others of our set
and watch the moon rise:
drink, philosophise,
laugh and disdain
things beyond redress.
High debts and low business—
court-envies—could not stain
what for us was sure,
like the oriole
I would hear sing
(brush in hand, labouring—
twilight a dying coal)
one last clear remark
from the Royal Park.
A cheerless kingdom lay spread
for our latter days—
plains, mountain chains,
highroads, river-ways.
Bored by the rough and ill-bred,
we should take pains
and must face as commonplace
that we would lose
friends, all that mattered.
No one could choose,
when failure and good grace
equally scattered.
Yet our short time was cut.
You were insolent,
they said, and should be sent
to cool, in Lan-t’ien—
make yourself useful, but
After you left, a few tears.
Then when you were, day
by day, further away,
I dreamt one night
you came, sad and in fears
that you could not write
A knocking woke me—‘Doo-n
doo-ng’—and there came
a letter in your name!
There you were thinking
and writing, the mountain moon
of Yang-Ch’êng sinking
You wrote by candle-light,
an exile’s heartaches—
worst, that the road he takes
lacks friends: and ten
verses with moon, flower, midnight
said it again.
Ten lines to me like gold!
My heart leapt, and mounted.
Looking for less,
I was the more consoled,
and would not guess
Worse came than some years to wait,
when in my turn I
would go, and you stay.
That first time we thought so late
would look far away:
another world, other sky.
His old fame is dumb,
and from his brush
no new songs will come.
In a dead hush
his poems on silk must
be collecting dust
But I heard one day
not listening,
not too far away
a woman sing
some lines, a stave or two—
seemed, seemed I knew
Trying to know,
I felt my heart sting
from the cut or blow—
saw, knew the thing:
his phrase and line, the look
even of his book.
And I see myself see that:
no moment with him,
no glimpse of his face,
but myself looking at
his book in a dim
—On board ship, held up by gales
for weeks at Chiu-k’ou!
I thought bitterly
‘Everything I do fails:
reaching exile too
can be beyond me’
Wind, rain, wind, for weeks:
the landing reeks.
Tired, late at night
I put off bed and look
by candle-light,
and find Yüan’s book
I undo the twine,
and read every line.
The candle gutters.
I sit by its last rays:
softly it sputters—
vacantly I gaze
Night is far from dawn,
but I sit on:
and listen with eyes
half-closed, to waves that now
strike, as the winds rise,
harder on the prow.
I can be more solitary
now, with no ties:
have no need to marry
or give in marriage,
and need not prize
those duties, or disparage
My temptation increases
to lie late in bed,
small nephews and nieces
all flown, having grown.
Even morning-red
sours, to one left alone.
Yet sound above, beneath
I have ‘green’ old age:
still have eyes and teeth—
still strength and will to see,
and play the sage
through strange wild scenery
Now to be sure I can
set off no longer
with but a man-
servant and my stick and wrap:
but must take a stronger
But then I can wander
alone for an hour
and find, like this,
a grey cove where the waves hiss,
and a thin tattered bower
of tree-roots, where I may ponder
Waves glint and tap.
Thinking ‘Here you
could never have been’,
I pause: but have been seen
by a dipper with blue
wings, who gives up his nap.
O Wei-chih, Wei-chih,
how many as lone
rivers and mountain-shelves
without you have I known—
and could not see,
and not think of our two selves?
Sunset in bright curds
and petal-shapes
of flame, towered up the sky,
hushing the mountain apes
and valley birds
From my thatched hut
I looked down the West,
where it sank back, and back:
and ached, to be unblest,
wingless, and shut
from the vast flaming track.
I might gaze today
on that rare fiery way,
but with you not there,
not long to ride the air.
Where there is no
Yüan, why should I go?
But where there is no
more striving to have and know,
one sees, no way there,
but burning peace laid bare.
I saw that today,
Po Lo-t’ien can say.