After Lunch
After eating lunch, I feel so sleepy.
Waking later, I sip two bowls of tea,
then notice shadows aslant, the sun
already low in the southwest again.
Joyful people resent fleeting days.
Sad ones can't bear the slow yers.
It's those with no joy and no sorrow—
they trust whatever this life brings.
poem by Bai Juyi
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Grasses
Boundless grasses over the plain
Come and go with every season;
Wildfire never quite consumes them --
They are tall once more in the spring wind.
Sweet they press on the old high- road
And reach the crumbling city-gate....
O Prince of Friends, you are gone again....
I hear them sighing after you.
poem by Bai Juyi
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A Foresaken Garden
I enter the court
Through the middle gate—
And my sleeve is wet with tears.
The flowers still grow
In the courtyard,
Though two springs have fled
Since last their master came.
The windows, porch, and bamboo screen
Are just as they always were,
But at the entrance to the house
Someone is missing—
You!
poem by Bai Juyi
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On the Lake (1)
Mountain monks facing chess sit
Board on bamboo dark quiet
Shine bamboo no person see
Sometimes hear down chess piece sound
Two monks sit facing, playing chess on the mountain,
The bamboo shadow on the board is dark and clear.
Not a person sees the bamboo's shadow,
One sometimes hears the pieces being moved.
poem by Bai Juyi
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The Almond Blossoms of Chao Village
For fifteen long years,
Times without number
I have come
To see the red almond-blossoms
Open in the spring.
Now I am growing old—
I am all of seventy-three,
And it is hard for my old legs
To come thus far.
I fear that this time
Is the last,
And I have come
To bid the red blossoms of the almond
A long farewell.
poem by Bai Juyi
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Staying at Bamboo
an evening sitting under
the eaves of the pines
at night sleeping
in Bamboo Lodge
the sky so clear you'd say
it was drugs
meditation so deep, thought
I'd gone home to the hills
but Clever can't beat
Stupid
and Quick won't match
Quiet
Untoiling-ness!
(you just can't pave the Way)
that's it!
the Gate of Mystery!
poem by Bai Juyi
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Poems in Depression, at Wei Village
I hug my pillow and do not speak a word;
In my empty room no sound stirs.
Who knows that, all day a-bed,
I am not ill and am not even asleep?
II
Turned to jade are the boy's rosy cheeks;
To his sick temples the frost of winter clings....
Do not wonder that my body sinks to decay;
Though my limbs are old, my heart is older yet.
poem by Bai Juyi
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The Bloom is not a Bloom
Bloom not bloom
mist not mist
Night half come
heaven bright go
Come like spring dream how long time?
Go like morning cloud not find place The bloom is not a bloom,
The mist not mist.
At midnight she comes,
And goes again at dawn.
She comes like a spring dream -
how long will she stay?
She goes like morning cloud, without a trace.
poem by Bai Juyi
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Night on the West River
No moon
To light my way upon the stair,
Cold comfort
In the wine I drink alone.
Black clouds,
Rain,
The hurried flight of birds,
Water flowing grayly
In the dusk.
A rising storm,
Boats tugging at their mooring ropes.
Or s ails full-spread
To take advantage of the wind.
A moving point of fire
In the dark,
The distant lantern
Of a passing boat.
poem by Bai Juyi
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Enjoying Pine and Bamboo
I treasure what front eaves face
and all that north windows frame.
Bamboo winds lavish out windows,
pine colors exquisite beyond eaves,
I gather it all into isolate mystery,
thoughts fading into their source.
Others may feel nothing in all this,
but it's perfectly open to me now:
such kindred natures need share
neither root nor form nor gesture.
poem by Bai Juyi
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