Slow, Slow Song: Seeking, Seeking, Searching

Seeking and searching, cold and desolate, wretched and sorrowful and forlorn. In the season when it warms and then turns cold again, it is hardest to find rest. Two or three cups of thin wine—how can they stand against the evening wind's sharpness? The wild geese pass over; even as my heart breaks, they turn out to be old acquaintances.

The yellow flowers heap the ground, withered and spoiled; who is there now to pick them? Keeping to the window, alone—how can I bear it until dark? The paulownia, and fine rain besides, at dusk dripping drop by drop. In such a pass as this, how can one single word, sorrow, ever suffice!