Poems Based on Early Chinese Poetry, by George Freek

AUTUMN THOUGHTS BY THE RIVER (After SU TUNG PO)

A cool breeze rustles the leaves.
A few boats move downstream.
Stars dot the sky. The moon
shoots out her pale beams.
They ripple on the waves
and seem to flow with the river,
drifting I can’t say where.
I doze fitfully in the chilly air.
Rain interrupts my uneasy dreams.
I’m almost eighty. I feel
death is near. I watch a drunk,
stagger between heaven
and earth. Like him, I
would like a drink.
But it will not ease my fear.

A POEM FOR THE BIRDS (After TU FU)

My mind is on banal things.
That leaf falling from that tree
is reality to me.
And the moon, as I know it,
is only in my mind. Yet,
I think there’s another moon,
beyond my thinking,
which I will never find.
I hear a night bird
singing in a far-off tree,
which I can’t see.
I’m afraid I’ve grown old,
staring at the moon,
looking for birds, which care
nothing at all about me.

THE NIGHT IS DARK (After MEI YAO CHEN)

The thin clouds ripple
like sheets on an unmade bed,
where my wife once lay.
But my wife is dead.
Two crows in broken branches
look eager and unfed.
There is no sun. There is no moon.
The day topples
where it finds the room.
Geese fly south, not
by reason or passion.
It’s simply an instinctive action.
And as a poet once etched
on a cold marble stone:
The Pleiades are dark,
my life is half way,
and I lie in my bed, alone.