English Rendering
It's deep winter. There's ice spreading across the P'en River,
and when night comes, Lu Mountain fades into dark clouds,
snow falling, buffeted in the gusty wind and fine as rice,
scattering restless and windblown through shoreline reeds.
I've spent two years here, and this morning you start home,
sent off with a mere splash of wine. For us, facing ourselves
grown steadily older, that's plenty. It's all drifting idleness:
everything gathering and scattering, failing and succeeding.
