24 Illness and Idleness
[Circa a.d. 812]
Illness and idleness give me much leisure.
What do I do with my leisure, when it comes?
I cannot bring myself to discard inkstone and brush;
Now and then I make a new poem.
When the poem is made, it is slight and flavourless,
A thing of derision to almost every one.
Superior people will be pained at the flatness of the metre;
Common people will hate the plainness of the words.
I sing it to myself, then stop and think about it...
The Prefects of Soochow and P‘ēng-tsē1
Would perhaps have praised it, but they died long ago.
Who else would care to hear it?
No one to-day except Yüan Chēn,
And he is banished to the City of Chiang-ling,
For three years an usher in the Penal Court.
Parted from me by three thousand leagues
He will never know even that the poem was made.
Notes
1 Wei Ying-wu, eighth century a.d., and T’ao Ch’ien, a.d. 365-427.