[Dichtung]

Li Po
Fall Cove Songs
I
Fall Coves's as long as Autumn itself:
its sighing breath makes Autumn fall on every heart,
and a wanderer's heart, already burdened,
may be all the more likely to fall here.
So it's up the eastern tower for the likes of me,
for a long gaze straight back toward Ch'ang-an,
or, straight down, to find the river's water run
away.
And i'll send these words with the river's waters:
"Does your whole heart rest here
with the same thoughts as mine?"
If I row the first clumsy strokes of the way
with my hands full of tears, Fall River will carry
me
all the way home.

II
At Fall Cove it's the gibbons make the nights so
sad...
A Yellow Mountain it was my own white hair
that I endures.
The water's clear, but it's no garden pool,
rather a rushing, roiling, gut-wrenching stream...
a place to love to leave, but hard to get around to
leaving,
and what was to be a little trip's become a
tiresome trek.
In just what year, I wonder, will I find myself a
day for my return?
Tears raining into the orphaned boat.

III
Fall Cove's a rare brocaded bird...
no place like it in the world of men, and few in
Heaven.
Famous Mountain Pheasant's put to shame
By these greenest waters...
wouldn't dare let its feathered gown
be reflected here!

IV
I was a bristle of whiskers when I came to Fall
Cove,
then one morning I woke up withered.
Turns out the cry of gibbons turns hair white,
till long or short, it's gone to silky wisps.

V
So many white gibbons at Fall Cove,
leaping and swinging up, like snow flying.
They lead their little ones out to the ends of the
branches,
to drink and to play, in the moon, in the water.

VI
Greaf at heart's what makes the Fall Cove
wanderer
look close at Fall Cove's flowers...
Hills and streams like Yen-hsien County,
on a windy day it could be Chang-hsia.

VII
Drunk, I try to climb aboard the mount of the
Mountain Lord!
Cold, I sing of Ning Chi's cow...
In vain, I chant the poem of the wite stone's
ripening...
till my tears soak the black sable robe.

VIII
Of a Fall Cove's double thousand mountains:
the Water Wheel Range is the strangest.
The sky tirnd over like you tip a cup to show
it's dry,
until you find yourself expecting gravel to fall
out...
all the tipped-out water comes, strange,
with a rush over the mistletoe on the branches...

IX
The River Spirit Ancestor;s a rock face,
against the bluest sky, swept clear for a painted
screen.
Poems have been written here forever.
Green characters appear to be brocade
where moss and lichen grow.

X
A thousand thousand stone-cedar trees:
ten thousand nyriad pure girl-child privet
groves:
mountains, mountains, white egrets full:
pools, clear pools like open doorways,
where the white apes chant their poems.
Gentlmen, don't come to Fall Cove....
The ape's cry shatters your heart:
it will be the end of your travels.

XI
The soldiers of the watch march straight across
the bird track.
The River Spirit Ancestor thrusts up behind a
dishing weir.
The water's fast, the traveler's skiff's an arrow.
But the mountain flowers brush his face with
fragrance.

XII
The water's like a fresh-spread roll of raw silk:
this place, here, flar as the sky.
Be patient, and you'll ride the bright moon:
watch the flowers board the wine barge.

XIII
In emerald water, a pure white hand, the moon.
Moon bright, white egret, flying.
The boys hear the girls who've been out picking
water chestnuts.
There's only one road: it rings with their
singing, all the way home

XIV
Fire of the smelters' furnaces lights up sky, and
earth,
sparks, red stars, a chaos in the purpled smoke,
making the young smelterers appear to blush
even on a brightly moonlit night.
Their songs move into every curve of the cold river.

XV
White hair! Three thosand cubits long...
and a sadness, a sorrow as long.
I do not know, into my bright mirror, here,
whence it's come, this Autumn frost....

XVI
At Fall Cove in a hut with a little field, a good
old farmer
catches fish that live in the water there.
His wife sets snares for the silver pheasant:
she ties her nets in the brightest sunlight
just at edge of the deep bamboo.

XVII
A wave laps at the foot of the ancestral hall.
Clearly, it's the sound of words I hear, but there's
nothing I understand.
In the dark I say farewell to the mountain monk,
bowing politely to the white cloud.

transl. by J.P. Seaton