The Moon over the West River: Lately at Huangzhou

Not long ago, at Huangzhou, I travelled one spring night along the Qi River, stopped at a wineshop to drink, and being drunk, rode by moonlight to a bridge over a brook; I loosened the saddle, pillowed my head upon my arm, and lay drunk to rest a while. When I awoke it was already dawn: tangled hills crowded close about, the stream chimed clearly, and I doubted it could be the mortal world. I wrote these words upon the bridge's pillar.

Light floods the wide, shallow ripples; across the sky, faint layer upon layer of cloud. The mud-guard not yet loosed, my jade-gray horse is restive — I would lie drunk upon the fragrant grass.

How precious, this one stream of wind and moon: let me not trample the jade to pieces. I loose the saddle and pillow my head by the green willow bridge; one cry of the cuckoo — spring at dawn.