INSCRIBED ON A PAINTING IN WANG TING-KUO’S COLLECTION ENTITLED MISTY RIVER AND CROWDED PEAKS

Heartbreak above the river, a thousand peaks and summits

drift kingfisher-green in empty skies, like mist and cloud.

At these distances, you don’t know if it’s mountain or cloud

until mist thins away and clouds scatter. Then mountains

remain, filling sight with canyoned cliff-walls, azure-

                                                                                            green, valleys in cragged shadow,

and cascades tumbling a hundred Ways in headlong flight,

stitching forests and threading rock, seen and then unseen

as they plunge toward valley headwaters, and wild streams

growing calm where mountains open out and forests end.

A small bridge and country inn nestled against mountains,

travelers gradually work their way beyond towering trees,

and a fishing boat drifts, lone leaf on a river swallowing sky.

I can’t help asking where you found a painting like this,

bottomless beauty and clarity so lavish in exquisite detail:

I never dreamed there was a place in this human

                                                                                     realm so perfect, so very lovely.

All I want is to go there, buy myself a few acres and settle in.

You can almost see them, can’t you? Those pure and remote

                                                                                                         places in Wu-ch’ang and Fan-

k’ou where I lingered out five recluse years as Master East-Slope:

a river trembling in spring wind, isolate skies boundless,

and evening clouds furling rain back across lovely peaks,

crows gliding out of red maples to share a boatman’s night

and snow tumbling off tall pines startling his midday sleep.

Peach blossoms drift streamwater away right here in this

human realm, and Warrior-Knoll wasn’t for spirit immortals.

Rivers and mountains all empty clarity: there’s a road in,

but caught in the dust of this world, I’ll never find it again.

Returning your painting, I’m taken by sighs of sad wonder.

I have old friends in those mountains,

                                                                   and their poems keep calling me home.