Leonard often shares Chinese poems, and this one is simply wonderful:
It’s so hard to be together, and so hard to part: a tender
east wind is powerless: the hundred blossoms crumble:
the heart-thread doesn’t end until the silkworm’s dead,
and tears don’t dry until the candle’s burnt into ash:
she grieves, seeing white hair in her morning mirror,
and chanting at night, she feels the chill of moonlight:
exquisite Paradise Mountain—it isn’t so very far away,
and that azure bird can show us the way back anytime.
translated by David Hinton
