The Peach Blossom Spring

The Ying clan disrupted Heaven's ordinance

And good men withdrew from such a world.

Huang and Ch'i went off to Shang Mountain

And these people too fed into hiding.

Little by little their tracks were obliterated

The paths they followed overgrown at last.

By agreement they set about farming the land

When the sun went down each rested from his toil.

Bamboo and mulberry provided shade enough,

They planted beans and millet, each in season.

From spring silkworms came the long silk thread

On the fall harvest no king's tax was paid.

No sign of trafic on overgrown roads,

Cockcrow and dogsbark within each other's earshot.

Their ritual vessels were of old design,

And no new fashions in the clothes they wore.

Children wandered about singing songs,

Greybeards went paying one another calls.

When grass grew thick they saw the time was mild,

As trees went bare they knew the wind was sharp.

Although they had no calendar to tell,

The four seasons still filled out a year.

Joyous in their ample happiness

They had no need of clever contrivance.

Five hundred years this rare deed stayed hid,

Then one fine day the fay retreat was found.

The pure and the shallow belong to separate worlds:

In a little while they were hidden again.

Let me ask you who are convention-bound,

Can you fathom those outside the dirt and noise?

I want to tread upon the thin thin air

And rise up high to find my own kind.