Endless my yearning
To be with you in Ch’ang-an.
Faraway, where chirring crickets
thread autumn songs
around the well’s gold rail,
coldly I sit, cramped
on a bamboo mat
crusted with blue frost.
Dim is the light from my only lamp,
darkly ablaze my longing for you.
Lifting the curtain, I stare
hard at the moon.
Helplessly, I sigh and sigh, longing
to smell the flower-scent of a woman
who dwells far from me
as the remotest cloud at sky’s end.
Above, the night climbs
into boundless black.
Below, the river tosses up
billows of darkest green.
Must heaven be so high?
Earth so vast?
Between them, my unfed soul
flies over a road that even in my dreams
is blocked at every mountain pass.
This endless yearning
Breaks my heart!