A Casual Poem in the Night 夜來偶題

By Yuan Xi from White Cloud Poetry Society | Translated by Jennifer Zeng  文：白雲詩社 元曦 | 英文翻譯：曾錚 

Lost within the confines of the secular world
My dreams are few and far between
Listening to the flute under the moon
Like a soldier on expedition
Accompanied by the desolate wind
Ten thousand miles away  
Shrouded in the cold moonlight 
My clothing white as snow 
The green mountains must remain the same 
When upon my return, I shall go hiking 
Wearing pegged clogs like Master Xie*

* Master Xie refers to Xie Lingyun (385-433), one of the foremost Chinese poets of the Southern and Northern Dynasties and a famous practitioner of the Six Dynasties era poetry.  Xie’s landscape poems are based on physical and intimate contact with the subject at hand. He toured the magnificent landscapes of Zhejiang with admirable enthusiasm, even designing a type of wooden clog with removable pegs for hiking up and down the mountains. When hiking upward, the pegs were placed underneath the rear part of the clog; when coming downward, the pegs were removed to the front to balance the height difference. People later called this type of clog "Master Xie's Clog".

紅塵有盡夢已稀

月下征人夜聽笛

兩鬢風蕭身萬里

一襲冷照霜滿衣

想來青山依舊在

歸去著我謝公屐