ON A TOWER BESIDE THE LAKE

Quiet mystery of lone dragons alluring,

calls of migrant geese echoing distances,

I meet sky, unable to soar among clouds,

face a river, all those depths beyond me.

Too simpleminded to perfect Integrity

and too feeble to plow fields in seclusion,

I followed a salary here to the sea’s edge

and lay watching forests bare and empty.

That sickbed kept me blind to the seasons,

but opening the house up, I’m suddenly

looking out, listening to surf on a beach

and gazing up into high mountain peaks.

A warm sun is unraveling winter winds,

new yang swelling, transforming old yin.

Lakeshores newborn into spring grasses

and garden willows become caroling birds:

in them the ancient songs haunt me with

flocks and flocks and full lush and green.

Isolate dwelling so easily becomes forever.

It’s hard settling the mind this far apart,

but not something ancients alone master:

that serenity is everywhere apparent here.