I live here in a village house without
all that racket horses and carts stir up, 

and you wonder how that could ever be.
Wherever the mind dwells apart is itself 

a distant place. Picking chrysanthemums
at my east fence, I see South Mountain 

far off: air lovely at dusk, birds in flight
returning home. All this means something, 

something absolute: whenever I start
to explain it, I forget words altogether. 

--No. 5 from Drinking Wine; T'ao Ch'ien (365-427 CE)

*trans by David Hinton