YIN-LUAN

(late T'ang)
translated by Mike O'Connor








In Szechuan Seeing Off A Friend To Lu Mountain


You’re traveling
at the fragrant time of spring

on the Szechuan road
where all the hills are blooming.

Ten li of stream bank,
five li of flowers,

and two or three peaks
in snow above clouds.

You’ll be on Lu Mountain,
at my old home,

where, in my absence,
pine trees are ten years taller.

When you finally
arrive at the mountain,

please ask the birds
if they remember me.


Lu Mountain is in Chiangsi Province. A li is roughly three miles. Only four poems of Yin-luan are extant.

Mike O'Connor's poems and translations are all over our house — books, chapbooks, booklets and in letters over years & years. Long a resident of China and the Pacific Northwest, he has been associated with the very fine press Empty Bowl. At the very least his books The Basin and The Rainshadow may be mined out of our bookshop. Go take a look.