Li Po
Submitted at the Imperial Command, A Poem Written by the Dragon Pool in the Spring Garden While Viewing the Newly Greening Willows and Listening to the Hundreds of New Songs of the First Nightingales
The East Wind is already greeting the grass of
Ying-chou.
In the purple palace with its red towers we come
to see
and feel the fertility of Spring.
South of the pool the color of the willows is full
halfway to Spring green,
and delicate tendrils of mist wreathe the palace
wall,
while hundred-foot threads of willow
hang down from the carven pillars.
Above, the obedient birds sing together in
harmony:
within these grounds the find the Spring
comes early.
Spring breeze goes reaching up through blue
clouds, and out,
to a thousand gates and ten thousand doors
where all hear Spring's music!
For today, as with Ancients, "the King is in
Hao-ching,"
and five clouds of co;or hang brightness,
leading, a sparkle, up toward purple purity...
And goes forth from his Golden Palace,
following the sun through the seasons,
returning from Heaven in his jade cart,
he goes for a turn among his flowers,
starting at P'eng-lai to see the dance of the
Immortal Cranes,
and turning homeward through the YI-shih
Garden,

where the first nightingales were heard to sing.
And those first nightingales flew, circling up, in
the Grove Garden,
Begging to enter the mouth-organ sound of
their song
among the voices of the concert of the
Emperor's phoenix flutes

transl. by J.P. Seaton