Eastern Slope

1.
Abandoned earthworks nobody tends,
collapsed wall tangled in vines—
who'd waste strength on land like this?
Work all year for no return.
But here's a stranger, alone,
Heaven against him, nowhere to go,
pitching in to clear the rubble and wrack.
Weather too dry, soil lean;
pushing through brambles and weeds,
wondering can I scrape out a handful of produce,
I sigh and let go the plow—
my barn—when will I fill it up?
2.
A little stream used to cross my land,
came from the mountain pass back there,
under city walls, through villages—
the current sluggish and choked with grass—
feeding finally into Ke Clan Pond,
ten mu stocked with fish and shrimp.
Drought this year dried it up,
its cracked bed plastered with brown duckweed.
Last night clouds came from hills to the south;
rain soaked the ground a plowshare deep.
Rivulets found the channel again,
knowing I'd chopped back the weeds.
In the mud a few old roots of cress
still alive from a year ago.
If white buds will open again,
when spring doves come I'll make a stew!
3.
I planted rice before Spring Festival
and already I'm counting joys!
Rainy skies darken the spring pond;
by green-bladed paddies I chat with friends.
Transplanting takes till the first of summer,
delight growing with wind-blown stalks.
The moon looks down on dew-wet leaves
strung one by one with hanging pearls.
Fall comes and frosty ears grow heavy,
topple, and lean propped on each other.
From banks and dikes I hear only
the sound of locusts like wind and rain.
Rice, newly hulled, goes to the steamer,
grains of jade that light up the basket.
A long time I've eaten only government fare,
old rusty rice no better than mud.
Now to taste something new—
I've already promised my mouth and belly.

 
Written on a Painting Entitled "Misty Yangzi and Folded Hills" in the Collection of Wang Dingguo

Above the river, heavy on the heart, thousandfold hills:
layers of green floating in the sky like mist.
Mountains? clouds? too far away to tell
till clouds part, mist scatters, on mountains that remain.
Then I see, in gorge cliffs, black-green clefts
where a hundred waterfalls leap from the sky,
threading woods, tangling rocks, lost and seen again,
falling to valley mouths to feed swift streams.
Where the river broadens, mountains part, foothill forests end,
a small bridge, a country store set against the slope:
now and then travelers pass beyond tall trees;
a fishing boat—one speck where the river swallows the sky.
Tell me, where did you get this painting
sketched with these clean and certain strokes?
I didn't know the world had such places—
I'll go at once and buy some land!
But perhaps you've never seen those hidden spots
near Wuchang and Fankou, where I lived five years—
Spring wind shook the river and sky was everywhere;
evening clouds rolled back the rain on gentle mountains;
from scarlet maples, crows flapped down to keep the boatman company;
from tall pines, snow tumbled, startling his drunken sleep.
The peach flowers, the stream are in the world of men!
Wuling is not for immortals only.
Rivers, hills, clean and empty: I live in city dust,
and though roads go there, they're not for me.
I give back your picture and sigh three sighs;
my hill friends will soon be sending poems to call me home.