1144. Addressed Humorously to Tu Fu - Li Po (705-762 A.D.)

  Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata

Here! is this you on the top of Fan-ko Moutain,

Wearing a huge hat in the noonday sun?

How thin, how wretchedly, you have grown!

You must have been suffering from poetry again.

1143. A Game Of Chess - Gwen Harwood

To John Brodie

Nightfall: the town’s chromatic nocturne wakes

dark brilliance on the river; colours drift

and tremble as enormous shadows lift

Orion to his place. The heart remakes

that peace torn in the blaze of day. Inside

your room are music, warmth and wine, the board

with chessmen set for play. The harpsichord

begins a fugue; delight is multiplied.

A game: the heart’s impossible ideal —

to choose among a host of paths, and know

that if the kingdom crumbles one can yield

and have the choice again. Abstract and real

joined in their trance of thought, the two players show

the calm of gods above a troubled field. 

1142. On The Birth Of A Son - Su Shih (Su Tung-Po) (1036-1101 A.D.) -

Translated by Arther Waley

Families when a child is born

Hope it will turn out intelligent.

I, through intelligence,

Having wrecked by whole life,

Only hope the baby will prove

Ignorant and stupid.

Then he’ll be happy all his days

And grow into a cabinet minister.