Spring View
Translated by Arthur Sze
The nation is broken, but hills and rivers remain.
Spring is in the city, grasses and trees are thick.
Touched by the hard times, flowers shed tears.
Grieved by separations, birds are startled in their hearts.
The beacon fires burned for three straight months.
A letter from home would be worth ten thousand pieces of gold.
As I scratch my white head, the hairs become fewer:
so scarce that I try in vain to fasten them with a pin.
Thwarted
Translated by Carolyn Kizer
Thwarted, old friend! We have been baulked again.
Though we live at opposite ends of the same lane
We haven’t seen each other for ten whole days.
I returned my Official Horse to the local authorities
And the road is rotten, like a deliberate plot.
An obstacle course! Now, thanks to my lack of credit
I can’t even rent a carriage, though I still have shoes.
But what if my department head caught me afoot?
Taking such risks with protocol, face, future!
You know I’d walk through brambles to get to you.
By morning the rain is furious. I’m resigned.
Though I’ve raved like the spring wind, in my sleep.
Now I’m deaf to the ring-bell and the bang-drum,
The summons to Court. Next door a lame donkey grazes.
A complaisant neighbor owns him, lends him. Ho!
But I daren’t ride the beast in the slick mud.
Not to that slippery Palace! Let them mark me absent.
Life is one long, fragmented, murky episode.
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