The birds chirp—I can’t really bear my feelings—
At such hours I prostrate in my thatched shelter,
Two yards on two yards, having no vigour to rise.
Cherries and peaches red with lustre and shine;
Maples and ash-trees are shaggy in their crowns.
The setting sun merges with grey slopes of cliffs;
Thin clouds bathe clean in the mountain springs.
After a long day of toil in the mulberry field I feel
The full moon’s sneaking up to take its central part
In the red-and-black sky. . . After so many years
Of self-extension and extreme alchemical efforts,
Who has found the way of getting out of dull routine
And country pains and driving up the western slope
Of the Werewolf Mountain scale its peak, on which
The witches and shamans hold the yearly sabbath?
Ron