Bamboo and Plum Blossom

Bamboo and Plum Blossom

Bamboo and Plum Blossom

Bamboo and Plum Blossom
Bamboo and Plum Blossom

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Tao Chien (365-427)

 
 
                           Returning to Live in the Country
 
       Young, I was always free of common feeling.
        It was in my nature to love the hills and mountains.
        Mindlessly I was caught in the dust-filled trap.
        Waking up, thirty years had gone.
        The caged bird wants the old trees and air.
        Fish in their pool miss the ancient stream.
        I plough the earth at the edge of South Moor.
        Keeping life simple, return to my plot and garden.
        My place is hardly more than a few fields.
        My house has eight or nine small rooms.
        Elm-trees and Willows shade the back.
        Plum-trees and Peach-trees reach the door.
        Misted, misted the distant village.
        Drifting, the soft swirls of smoke.
        Somewhere a dog barks deep in the winding lanes.
        A cockerel crows from the top of the mulberry tree.
        No heat and dust behind my closed doors.
        My bare rooms are filled with space and silence.
        Too long a prisoner, captive in a cage,
        Now I can get back again to Nature.

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