Heritage & Innocence

At dusk my heart is filled with gloom;

I drive my cab to ancient tomb.

The setting sun seems so sublime,

But it is near its dying time.

The yellow crane has long since gone away,

All that here remains is yellow crane tower.

The yellow crane once gone does not return,

White clouds drift slowly for a thousand years.

The river is clear in Hanyang by the trees,

And fragrant grass grows thick on parrot isle.

In this dusk, I don't know where my homeland lies,

The river's mist-covered waters bring me sorrow.

-- Poem translator: Kiang Kanghu

Boiling beans burns the beanstalk,

Beans inside the pan cry:

We're both grown from one root,

Why so fast to boil each other?

Goose, goose, goose,

You bend your neck towards the sky and sing.

Your white feathers float on the emerald water,

Your red feet push the clear waves.

Farmers weeding at noon,

Sweat down the field soon.

Who knows food on a tray

Thanks to their toiling day?

Mountains cover the white sun,

And oceans drain the golden river;

But you widen your view three hundred miles

By going up one flight of stairs.

So bright a gleam on the foot of my bed --

Could there have been a frost already?

Lifting myself to look, I found that it was moonlight.

Sinking back again, I thought suddenly of home.

I awake light-hearted this morning of spring,

Everywhere round me the singing of birds --

But now I remember the night, the storm,

And I wonder how many blossoms were broken.

The thread in the hands of a fond-hearted mother

Makes clothes for the body of her wayward boy;

Carefully she sews and thoroughly she mends,

Dreading the delays that will keep him late from home.

But how much love has the inch-long grass

For three spring months of the light of the sun?