From Omei’s southern slope
Descends a Buddhist monk with a green-stringed lute.
He plays for me,
And the sound is as the wind
In ten thousand pines
In the valley below.
It purifies the wanderer’s heart
As though it were plunged
In the clearest stream.
Its dying echoes arouse a frosty note
In a nearby temple bell.
The sun sinks down behind the hills,
Their peaks blotted out
By autumn’s dark-green clouds
— But of this I am unaware.
