"And trees never resent leaf-fall in autumn skies."

SUNFLIGHT CHANT

Sun rises over its eastern harbor
as if coming from some underworld
and crossing heaven, returns again to western seas,
nowhere its six sun-dragons could ever find rest.
It’s kept up this daily beginning and ending forever,
but we’re not made of such ancestral ch’i,
................................so how long can we wander with it here?

Flowers bloom in spring wind. They never refuse.
And trees never resent leaf-fall in autumn skies.
No one could whip the turning seasons along so fast:
the ten thousand things rise and fall of themselves.

Hsi Ho, O great
Sun Mother, Sun Guide—how could you drown
.................................in those wild sea-swells of abandon?
And Lu Yang, by what power
halted evening’s setting sun?
It defies Tao, offends heaven—
all fake and never-ending sham.
I’ll toss this Mighty Mudball earth into a bag
and break free into that boundless birthchamber of it all!


Li Po (701-742 AD)

translator: David Hinton