AUTUMN THOUGHTS
1
Lonely bones canât sleep nights. Singing
insects keep calling them, calling them.
And the old have no tears. When they sob,
autumn weeps dewdrops. Strength failing
all at once, as if cut loose, and ravages
everywhere, like weaving unraveled,
I touch thread-ends. No new feelings.
Memories crowding thickening sorrow,
how could I bear southbound sails, how
wander rivers and mountains of the past?
2
Under this autumn moons face of frozen
beauty, the spirit driving an old wanderer
thins away. Cold dewdrops fall shattering
dreams. Biting winds comb cold through
bones. The sleeping-mat stamped with my
seal of sickness, whorled grief twisting,
thereâs nothing to depend on against fears.
Empty, sounds beginning nowhere, I listen.
Wu-tâung trees, bare and majestic, sing
sound and echo clear as a châinâs lament.
3
Moonlight edging through an empty
door, cold and valiant as sword-flight,
startled old bones sit dazed, suddenly
sicker and weaker still. Mourning
insects long for its piercing beauty.
Birds nest high, risking all its light.
A lovely widows arranging old silks,
sobbing alone. It drags up memories,
but I canât retrace the phantom years.
Frail steps always return home at dusk.
4
Autumnâs here. Iâm old and poorer still,
not even a door in this tumbledown house.
A sliver of moonlight cast across the bed,
walls letting wind cut through clothes,
the furthest dreams never take me far,
and my frail heart returns home easily.
Year-end blossoms abandon late greens,
weaving lost splendor into rival swirls,
and in my sick worry, dazed by things,
country walks grow rare. O isolate beauty,
crickets hidden among grasses and roots,
your sense of life grown faint as my own.
5
Bamboo ticking in wind speaks. In dark
isolate rooms, I listen. Demons and gods
fill my frail ears, so blurred and faint I
canât tell them apart. Year-end leaves,
dry rain falling, scatter. Autumn clothes
thin cloud, my sick bones slice through
things clean. Though my bitter chant
still makes a poem, Iâm withering autumn
ruin, strength following twilight away.
Trailed out, this fluttering thread of life:
no use saying itâs tethered to the very
source of earthâs life-bringing change.
6
Old bones fear the autumn moon. Autumn
moon, its swordblade of lightâ a chill
spirit sits frozen, and helpless against
even a sliver of its light. Widowed birds
build nests for itâ blank mirror, drifting
ice bathed in winds of eternity. Afraid
my footsteps may startle away, sickness
vast, I canât brave ice. Waking into this
pure glistening light, I lie in bed alone,
emaciate and all fear, all heart of fear:
it rinses rivers so clean water vanishes,
renders foul and muddy clear and pure.
When strong, my poems were empty talk.
Now theyâre so frail, what is there to trust?
7
Countless strange worries. Old and sick,
a mindâs not the same morning to night,
and autumn insects mourn a failing year,
sobbing tangled echoes I canât fathom.
My hair thin as autumn grass, a distant
scent moors me to chrysanthemum golds,
but light hurries easily into shadow now,
so how long can this late freshening last?
Itâs pointless to regret learning so little.
What good is knowledge against twilight?
Once my talent became clear, their spite
began, so wisdom born of solitude grew
deep early. Guard depth, not appearance:
isnât that what the ancients all taught?
8
Yearâs end in a dry world, autumn wind
starts-up all that arms-and-armor clatter.
Crickets working at song weave no cloth,
and when insects call and call for nothing,
autumn sounds sharpening past midnight,
feeble legs canât go any further. Once cut,
my black hair is like a garden in autumn:
it never grows back. And childhoodâs some
starveling blossom: brightness glimpsed,
never to return. Firm as mountain peaks,
the noble endure. Others bicker over trifles,
threads and feathers. The more they fight,
the more life they lose. The Way of heaven
warns against fullness: it just empties away.
9
Cold dew so rich in tired disappointment,
bare wind lush with sighs and whispers,
itâs deep autumn: the bitter moon pure,
old insects singing their unworried songs.
Red pearls strung branch after branch,
lazy chrysanthemum golds everywhere:
these flowers and trees answer the season,
their cold splendor like another sp...