Miscellaneous Feelings in the Sui Garden
1
Joy and anger are not caused by outside things:
they simply happen to arise in the heart.
Rising and falling are not matters of fate:
one simply happens to encounter them.
Reading a book and finding nothing there,
I drop the volume, get up, and take a walk.
I think I'll go to the bamboo grove
where I can listen to the springtime water flow.
2
Let them knock at the bramble gate —
the host is in a dream!
Startled awake, I search for my socks;
I must have lost them east of the thatched hut.
At night, with nothing on my mind,
in dream I watched the bamboo growing tall.
Should guests arrive now at my garden,
barefoot I will see them off.
3
Classics, Histories, Philosophers, Belles-Lettres:
these the four branches of literature.
Pavilions I have built, libraries —
one for each kind in four different spots.
In each one I have placed an inkstone
as well as several brushes to write.
Mornings I rise, wash my face,
then let my feet lead me where they will.
Circulating among all four,
happily I pass the day's twelve hours.
4
When they hear me stop reading out loud,
the farmers come from all around.
The healthy ones shoulder hoe and plow,
the fragile ones wear their hempen shoes.
The happy ones bring piles of bamboo mats,
the tired ones have bundled firewood.
They invite me to sit with them under the trees:
we all open our hearts to each other!
"This year we've suffered from wind and rain,
and still can't plant good sprouts.
We hear you chanting out loud from books:
could it be you prepare for exams?"
I love these people, their true, sincere nature,
and the way they speak, like little children!
Each one drinks a cup of wine
and we lie in a heap on the moss.
5
Do not mock me for building this tower tall:
of course a tower should be tall!
If you approach from three miles away,
already I'll see you from here.
When you visit, come not in a carriage:
the carriage's racket will terrify my birds.
And when you visit, don't come on a horse:
the horse's teeth will decimate my grass.
Also, when you visit, please, don't come at dawn:
we mountain folk hate to rise too early.
And when you visit, don't wait until dusk:
by then the flowers will all have withered away.
6
The Master of Sui Garden in the past
first built buildings here beside these hills.
Terraces, pavilions summoned clouds and mist;
wine cups glittered in the candlelight.
The old men here all say to me
that this Master was no vulgar man.
He took this garden and passed it on — to whom?
How could he know it would be me!
Long, long the thirty years;
and now I come, to help the flowers and bamboo.
"Follow Garden" : the meaning timely now;
no need to change the garden's name at all.
Consider my present-day happiness
continuation of the Master's joy.
Does it really just all "pass away"?
Past and present, still the same chess game!
And who will follow after I have left?
I ask the mountain, but it does not say.
poem by Yuan Mei, translated by Jonathan Chaves
Added by Dan Costinaş
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