A Poet Looks At The Moon - Chang Jo Hsu

I hear a woman singing in my garden,

But I look at the moon in spite of her.

I have no thought of trying to find the singer

Singing in my garden;

I am looking at the moon.

And I think the moon is honouring me

With a long silver look.

I blink

As bats fly black across the ray;

But when I raise my head the silver look

Is still upon me.

The moon delights to make eyes of poets her mirror,

And poets are many as dragon scales

On the moonlit sea.

---

Chang Jo Hsu [Zhang Ruoxu] (660 - c.720) China

Tranlsated by Edward Powys Mathers

Source: The Garden of Bright Waters: One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems, Translated by Edward Powys Mathers, Houghton Mifflin, 1920 [Project Gutenberg]