T'ao Ch'ien (translated by David Hinton)

from Drinking Wine

8

Too poor to hire help, we're being taken

over by a wilderness tangle of trees. All

silence, birds drifting clear skies and

isolate silence, there's no sign of others.

Time and space go on forever, but who

lives even to a hundred? Months and years

tighten, bustling each other away, and my

hair was already turning white long ago.

If we don't give up failure and success,

that promise we hold just turns to regret.

c400