Fresh-washed, I don a light hood's shade,
Yu Pool at dawn—wind and dew cascade.
In tune with realms beyond the dust,
How much more with this hermit just!
Rosy clouds scatter—peaks stretch wide,
Sky's vault—a few wild geese cried.
Leave cunning ways to those in power,
Let me be Fuxi's fool this hour!
新沐换轻帻，晓池风露清。
自谐尘外意，况与幽人行。
霞散众山迥，天高数雁鸣。
机心付当路，聊适羲皇情。
Composed around 810 AD during the Yuanhe era of Emperor Xianzong's reign, this work emerges from Liu Zongyuan's prolonged exile in Yongzhou following the failed Yongzhen Reforms. Having relocated to the western banks of the Xiao River's Ran Creek (which he renamed "Fool's Creek"), the poet constructed his dwelling amidst eight deliberately "foolish" landscape features - including Fool's Pond and Fool's Pavilion - as physical manifestations of his chosen reclusion. This dawn excursion poem, written during a morning visit to Fool's Pond with the hermit Xie Shanren, masterfully intertwines pristine natural imagery with philosophical resignation, standing as a seminal work of Liu's recluse poetry.
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