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| Home | Chinese Poetry | Chinese Philosophy | Poetry | ||||||||||||||
| T'ao Ch'ien | |||||||||||||||||
| The Selected Poems of T'ao Ch'ien | |||||||||||||||||
| Drinking Wine 5 I live here in a village house without all that racket horses and carts stir up, and you wonder how that could ever be. Wherever the mind dwells apart is itself a distant place. Picking chrysanthemums at my east fence, I see South Mountain far off: air lovely at dusk, birds in flight returning home. All this means something, something absolute: whenever I start to explain it, I forget words altogether. 8 Too poor to hire help, we're being taken over by a wilderness tangle of trees. All silence, birds drifting clear skies and isolate silence, there's no sign of others. Time and space go on forever, but who lives even to a hundred? Months and years tighten, bustling each other away, and my hair was already turning white long ago. If we don't give up failure and success, that promise we hold just turns to regret. |
Untitled Days and months never take their time. The four seasons keep bustling each other away. Cold winds churn lifeless branches. Fallen leaves cover long paths. We're frail, crumbling more with each turning year. Our temples turn white early, and once your hair flaunts that bleached streamer, the road ahead starts closing steadily in. This house is an inn awaiting travelers, and I yet another guest leaving. All this leaving and leaving— where will I ever end up? My old home's on South Mountain. |
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| DAVID HINTON
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