Listening To The Rain Poem by East Sea Fairy Xing Yi

By JIANG JieTranslated by East Sea Fairy

In my green years
I often listened to the falling rain
in a brothel and fooled around with either of the dears
who in her dark red-candle-lit bedroom had a thin bed curtain.
In my prime I would fain,
I would fain listen to the falling rain on the water
in a foreign domain,
seeing a drizzle dropping in the boundless river, as a traveler,
and heeding the hissings of the lost wild goose, a plaintive whiner.

Today,
in my old age,
all alone with my temples grey,
to listen to the drizzle in a monk's cot I myself engage.
Hardened to all those I've undergone in the world as a stage,
be it separation or reunion, bitter or sweeter,
myself from it I freely disengage
and just let the drizzle of a very light power
keep on dropping on the stairs to daybreak ever.