Qiao Ji - Quotations

Quotations

Enjoying Leisure

I refine autumn mists in my alchemist stove
And heat pure snow in my tea boiler.
Blossoms fall and waters swirl by my thatch hut,
Like the spring breeze in places long lost.
Call a woodcutter, tip the gourd and drink the dregs of cloud-pale grog.
Lean against a screen, I’m a saint drunk on dew on a pure bed of cold stone.
Hanging on a vine
A wild gibbon talks to the moon, bright through my pale papered window.
This old one awakens from his sleep.

Expressing my sorrow on a winter day

Winter and Cold,
The time of snow.
Who will be the withered plum’s companion?
A fisherman’s skiff
Is moored by an islet;
His coat of green reeds cannot keep out the wind and frost.
A fish takes the barb of his hook.
Wind
Blows his hair thin;
Frost
Chaps and cracks his hands.

Myself

Never counted among the dragons,
Never entered the lists of greats.
Always the wine sage,
Everywhere the verse seer.
A graduate of mists,
A drunken saint of river and lake.
Jokes and laughs were my official career;
Got stuck.
Wrote notes for forty years instead
On the mad and crazy wind and moon.

Leisure

In the hills among trees,
Hut of thatch secluded and fine.
Faded green pines, bright green of bamboos
Fit for a painting;
Three or four homes near the misty village.
The soaring dream pursued falling flowers,
For the taste of the world was like a chewed candle.
This man need only bear his own whitened head,
Not follow the monkey of his mind.
I plant my melons,
Pick my tea,
Smelt cinnabar in the alchemist stove;
Read a chapter of the Way and Power,
Talk a while the chat of a fisherman.
At leisure enclosed in my groves and fences;
Lie down drunk beneath a bottle-gourd trellis,
Just pure and unmoved, just me!