Lamentation Chant

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

South Mountain's peopled with such grief.
Ghost-rain keeps sprinkling empty grasses,

and autumn fills Ch'ang-an past midnight:
how many are turning old in all its wind?

Yellow-twilight paths blurred deep away,
streets of black-azure oak twist and sway,

trees standing in shadow beneath a moon.
Pellucid dawn will cover whole mountains.

Lacquer candles welcome new arrivals to
dark tombs. Confusions of fireflies flicker.


Li Ho (790-816) trans. David Hinton