glow.
23
Platonic Love
In the city I've passed through
There is a maiden of arched brows;
Pearls at her waist --
How they tinkle and jingle
While she treads!
She plays with her pet
In front of the blooming orchard;
She strums her lute
Under the full moon's height.
Her long song resounds
For months of running;
Her belly dance is to be seen
By a thousand of men. . .
There is no need
For such a long tarrying --
A heat-loving hibiscus, I'm sure,
Cannot withstand the winter cold.
24
An Agreement
Being a man of wisdom,
You ignore me by all means;
When you're playing a fool,
I try to ignore you, too.
In order to be neither stupid
Nor wise, from now on,
Let’s cease to communicate,
Even if for a while. . .
With the longsome night I sing
At the bright moon;
With the long-awaited dawn
I dance amid the pink clouds.
But how can I manage
To keep my cool and sit tight
With my sparse hair
Volitated in the chilly air
Of the frozen autumn season!
25
This
My mind is like the full moon in autumn,
Or a pool -- clean and transparent like a jade.
There is nothing to be comparable with this;
So, teach me a word I can use to describe it.
26
Apart
The weeping willows are hazy,
Like in a thick smoke;
Flying in wind petals --
Whirling about like sleet.
The husband lives apart,
Leaving his wife's district;
The wife resides in thinking
Of her husband's remote region.
Each one is at the opposite bank
Of the Heavenly River;
Who knows when will they meet,
Standing on the Celestial Bridge?
I am sending these words
To the Bright Moon Tower --
You will find no more
The flying together mated sparrows.
27
The Strata
The peach bloom is truly desired
To weather thru the heat of summer,
But the winds and moons
Of the early fall urge on --
They will not yield even a short.
You may search for kind men all around,
From of olden times none of them
Is still staying with us, and it's verified!
Day by day, it cannot be helped,
The flowers alter and fall;
Year after year people run thru change,
Transmuting all their looks and souls.
Today, where we use to raise the dust,
In old days the sea lapped against the rocks.
To retaste our old delights
We have to turn over some new strata.
28
The Pivot
As tradition states, Heaven’s way is like a perfect compass,
Correlation of the number 3, while Earth’s way is similar
To a perfect carpenter's square, correlation of the number 4.
The compass in motion describes a complete circle
Whereas the square brings things to the state of rest,
Securing them in their proper places -- in the four corners
Of the universe. What converts Heaven (3) and Earth (4)
Is the number 5, correlation of the Centre, the Pole Star
In the starlit sky. In the sense, we can contend that 3+4=5,
Symbol of the pivot, spiral development, increase
And complete upgrowth. The number 5 underlies
Both numerical diagrams: one is 55, another is 45
To total round 100, resume of the five generations.
All things are contained within the womb of the universe
Arranged around the Pole Star, the pivot of all existence.
The sun and the moon establish the boundaries of spheres
Of their influence to the left and to the right of the pivot.
The Yin and Yang natural forces in secrecy make contacts;
The four seasons sneak up without being noticed by others --
By stealth they take their appropriate periods; five phases
Conceal their motives until the right time makes them come.
Once all the six directions: up and down, north and south,
East and west become cohered with no apparent separation,
The four seasonal divisions revolve in succession
Around the Dipper constellation, as if the heavenly dial plate.
To stick to the axis of the universe means
To be born in spring, grown up in summer,
Cropped in autumn and preserved in winter.
This is the order defined by Heaven, once and for all.
When the dynamic odd numbers represent the static
And even-numbered spaces, the spiral development
Takes place as the earnest of progress accomplished victoriously.
Therefore, one who follows Heaven's will survives,
But one who contradicts it will surely die despite initial progress.
Similar, a man of wisdom has firm axis within his heart/mind,
Also known as the Clay Crystal, which enables all things
To rotate around his intents and which is similar to the Pole Star
In the midst of the sky, the universal axis for keeping
The powers of both primal entities, Heaven and Earth, linking.
29
Retirement
A mountain dweller --
His mind is calm and quiet;
His only care is about the chain
Of months move fast.
He works hard picking funguses
And herbs of eternity;
Can all these searching
And sorting make him immortal?
His yard cleans up once the clouds
Start to roll up and rack;
The forest is bright
Under the perfectly round moon’s disk.
Why does he always
Postpone his return to the world beneath?
The cassia tree which grows
On the other side of the moon
Attaches him to this retirement for good.
30
Serenity
The green brook -- the spring waters
Are crystal clear;
The moon's disk over a snowy peak
Is flashily white.
I am silently aware that my spirit
Is initially bright;
I am staring in air -- the scene
Is even more serene.
31
Refinement
The old scroll is enriched
With the brilliant poems of remote times;
My pot is flushed with the brew wine
I’ve made from the fruits that I picked
In the Grove of the Eighteen Divines.
Walking around, I delight in watching
The wild deer’s calves; sitting down,
I keep them close to my thighs;
Some of them cling to the left of my side,
Some of them stick to the right.
Frost and dew come through
My thatched brims; the moon's disk
Shines through the hole
In my earthen pitcher for a long time.
At such hours as these,
I use to sip slowly a couple of cups,
Reciting my verses -- a round number,
I put them all in a random ro
w,
Just as they cross my mind.
If you want to know what my poems
Are all about, they depict the human lives,
One hundred years long, in which
A true sympathy is alike a wild deer --
It always set to flee into the thickets
Even if you banish it from sight,
It won’t run away, adhering to you at both sides.
Once you decide to subjugate the naughty ape --
Your inflated Self, it’s best to start from listening
To the lion’s roar of your Pure Mind!
32
Still in Retreat
Clouds pile up about the rocky cliffs,
Touching the bluish azure of eternity;
A lonely path gets tangled among the hills—
Not a single stranger threads it up steep slope.
In the far off I gaze at the heavy sphere
Hovered in the falling down twilight
And the orphaned toad gives a wink at me
With its third eye on the other moon’s side.
Yes, its perfectly round face smiles at me,
Grinning from one absent ear to another,
And my mind becomes illuminated for awhile.
I’m hearing warbling of a single nightingale --
Tweeting away, it sustains a note and
Sustains it again, filling in holes in my soul.
I sit stiff, soaring above time and space --
Kaleidoscope of images and symbols,
Following the beating of my heart and
Breathing technique of my vital points,
Passes in endless train before my glance
To drive me away, and only the deities
And spirits know the terminal point
Of my journey up to the next morn.
Lodging up on the peak of my cloudy cliff,
I idly live in my hut with a hedge
Under two lofty pine trees. I let my life
In retreat to end smoothly its course
By bringing this lump of clay to its yellow source.
Having a sigh, I think over my past up tonight
And the rest of my innocence,
For the umpteenth time, like a mountain brook
Springing out its fathomless womb,
Flows east to merge with ever violent ocean
Of timeless ups and inescapable downs
That, as before, grip me from taking a leap
High into the bluish azure of eternity. . .
33
On the Werewolf Mountain
The birds chirp -- I can’t really bear my feelings,
At such hours I prostrate in my thatched shelter --
Two yards on two yards, having no vigour to rise.
Cherries and peaches red with lustre and shine;
Maples and ash-trees are shaggy in their crowns.
The setting sun merges with grey slopes of cliffs;
Thin clouds bathe clean in the mountain springs.
After a long day of toil in the mulberry field I feel
The full moon’s sneaking up to take its central part
In the red-and-black sky. . . After so many years
Of self-extension and extreme alchemical efforts,
Who's found the way of getting out of dull routine
And country pains and driving up the