I sit alone sad at my whitening hair

Waiting for ten o’clock in my empty house

In the rain the hill fruits fall

Under the lamp grasshoppers sound

White hairs will never be transformed

That elixir is beyond creation

To eliminate decrepitude

Study the absolute.

Wang Wei (?701-761)

TR. G.W. Robinson

in Zen Poems, Selected and Edited by Peter Harris, Longman, P53.