Far into distances on this Ch’ang-an road,
year-end skies spread away all ashen haze,
drifting snow filling rivers and mountains
new moon to old, dark blur beyond blur.
Arriving geese can’t tell rock from water.
Crows cry hunger across abandoned fields.
I’m empty here, a grief-stricken traveler
gazing: no sign of cook-smoke anywhere.
–Meng Hao-Jan
translated by David Hinton in The Mountain Poems of Meng Hao-Jan
Rivers and mountains beyond the form seen:
Hsiang-yang’s beauty brings them in reach,
and Long-View has the highest peak around.
Somehow I’d never climbed its cragged heights,
its rocky cliffs like walls hacked and scraped
and towering over mountains crowded near,
but today, skies so bright and clear, I set out.
Soon the far end of sight’s all boundless away,
Cloud-Dream southlands a trifle in the palm,
Warrior Knoll lost in that realm of blossoms.
And back on my horse, riding home at dusk,
a vine-sifted moon keeps the stream lit deep.
–Meng Hao-Jan
translated by David Hinton in The Mountain Poems of Meng Hao-Jan
drafty mountain hut 