Chinese poetry

I am reading from one of my thick anthologies of  world poetry and flitting online as well. I do love the succinctness of the great classical Chinese poets. But...what is not coming through? I know so little of daily life a thousand or so years ago. And then, when something does touch me, I am sitting near the poet and time is the question not the barrier...


The Ching-Ting Mountain
by: Li Bai (701-762)
translated by Shigeyoshi Obata

Flocks of birds have flown high and away;
A solitary drift of cloud, too, has gone, wandering on.
And I sit alone with the Ching-ting Peak, towering beyond.
We never grow tired of each other, the mountain and I.