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
At dawn with staff in hand I climbed the crags,
At dusk I made my camp among the mountains.
Only a few peaks rise as high as this house,
Facing the crags, it overlooks winding streams.
In front of its gates a vast forest stretches,
While boulders are heaped round its very steps.
Hemmed in by mountains, there seems no way out,
The track gets lost among the thick bamboos.
My visitors can never find their way,
And when they leave, forget the path they took.
The raging torrents rush on through the dusk,
The monkeys clamour shrilly through the night.
Deep in meditation, how can I part from Truth?
I cherish the Way and never will swerve from it.
My heart is one with the trees of late autumn,
My eyes delight in the buds of early spring.
I dwell with my constant companions and wait for my end,
Content to find peace through accepting the flux of things.
I only regret that there is no kindred soul,
To climb with me this ladder to the clouds in the blue.
–Xie Lingyun
Translated by J. D. Frodsham in Zen Poems (Everyman’s Library)
There’s a sage monk on Heng Mountain,
the beauty of five peaks his true bones,
autumn moon alight in a sea of water
revealing his ten-thousand-mile heart.
A guardian gone into southern darkness,
pilgrims of the Way all visit him there,
sweet dew sprinkling down, a language
clear and cool gracing flesh and hair.
Bright lake a mirror of fallen heaven,
scented hail a gate into all this silver:
come for the view, I feed on kind winds,
new blossoms teaching mind this vast.
–Li Po
Translated by David Hinton in The Selected poems of Li Po
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
Jade winejars tied in blue silk….
What’s taking that wineseller so long?
Mountain flowers smiling, taunting me,
it’s the perfect time to sip some wine,
ladle it out beneath my east window
at dusk, wandering orioles back again.
Spring breezes and their drunken guest:
today we were meant for each other.
– Li Po, translated by David Hinton in The Selected poems of Li Po
Ending our distant farewell, separation begins here, green mountains emptiness felt. We'll never again wander together sipping wine beneath last night's moon. The whole country sings praises of you, radiant through three reigns. Me, I'll go home to my river village, nurture what life remains in isolate depths of silence. -Du Fu Translated by David Hinton in Selected Poems of Tu Fu
Alone, Looking for Blossoms Along the River
A poem by Tu Fu, translated by David Hinton
1
Who understands the grief these riverside blossoms inflict?
It makes me crazy, and there’s no one here to tell, so I go
searching for our southern neighbor, my old friend in wine,
but he’s gone ten days drinking. All I find is an empty bed.
2
A thick frenzy of blossoms crowding our river shorelines,
I wander along, listing dangerously, in full fear of spring.
With poems and wine against all that profusion, I endure:
arrangements for this ancient, white-haired man can wait.
3
Deep river repose, two or three houses in bamboo quiet,
and such goings-on: red blossoms blazing among white.
Answering spring’s radiant glories, I too have my place:
sending them off with a lovely wine on the shores of life.
4
Looking east to the city all smoke crowded with blossoms,
I love our little Hundred-Flower Stream tower even more:
to open gold jars and label out fine wine, calling beautiful
women to dance on embroidered mats: who could bear it?
5
At the monastery abbot’s grace, the river flows away east,
spring’s radiant glories idle and tired among sparse winds.
In this crush of peach blossoms open without their owner’s
empty mind, I can treasure reds deep or shallow the same.
6
Blossoms crowd orchard paths where the abbot’s wife lives:
thousands, tens of clustered thousands weigh branches down,
and ceaseless butterflies linger in playful dance, as exquisite
oriole song tumbles along empty and altogether its very self
-Tu Fu
translated by David Hinton in The Selected Poems of Tu Fu
Vultures follow
vanishing snows north, feeding
easily on winter-
kill death. How
exquisite the death-
teaching their
flight offers: endlessly
patient, effortless,
indifferent. Some-
times, silence.
grown altogether
dark and deep, I must
decide to
breathe, decide
breath after
breath. And in the silence
before I
decide, I glimpse
how that dark
teaching sets us
free, how it
sets us free, and then
lifts away
again into flight.
David Hinton, from Desert: Poems
This mountain
seems somehow
lonely as I
am. People
come and go
through its empty
distances, and those
distances remain
empty. I’m getting old
now, but this
mountain’s
been here almost
forever. No
wonder it understands
loneliness so much
better than
I ever will. Every
time I come
here, we both
promise never to
leave, and mountains
always keep
their promises.
The eye, the mirror–
deep eye is
magic. Things seen
go all the way
inside me
and vanish there. It seems
impossible, I
know, but everything
heals from inside
out.
—David Hinton, from Desert: Poems
Pilgrimage
still dwelling on the death of a poet
I made my way to the peninsula
to pay homage in the woods
but amidst the throngs, nothing felt right
and so I returned to the island
with only a thin volume in my hands
drafty mountain hut 