Sebastian Hayes

Drifting
(after a poem by Roger Hunt Carroll)

Far off an empty autumn sky.
Yet farther still all human habitation seems!

A solitary egret stands at the river bank —
or is it a distant mountain peak?

The river swell subsides.
How slow the twilight falls! a crescent moon
smiles at me through the overhanging boughs…

I lay my single oar along the middle of my boat;
for tonight I mean to let the current take me
where it wills….

The Spring of Pure Water
(after a poem by Roger Hunt Carroll)

The new year celebrations are over, the cakes all eaten
and what is left put out as an offering for the birds;

the servants are taking down the coloured lanterns.
You and your noisy grandchildren have departed,
but I sit here still on the creaking wooden verandah
watching for the moon to climb out of those dark trees.

Down there beyond the stunted pussy willows
there was once a spring of very pure water,
people used to come from quite far just to taste it,
Father even sold some in the market in bottles.

As children we used to go there often
Whenever your family came to visit us from Beijing.
“Look!” you said as you drew up the overflowing pail,
“Look! There is a frog in the water!” and when I bent down
you splashed it all over my new gown…

It is years since the sides of the well have fallen in,
years since the rusty pulley and chain were removed,
grass grows over the spot, and I am hard put myself
sometimes to work out exactly where it stood.
And yet I know that deep down in the crevices of the rocks
the spring water flows just as pure and clear as ever
but is unable to get out….

Sebastian Hayes

Note: These poems can hardly be called ‘versions’, let alone translations. They were suggested to me by two French poems from the charming collection Tableaux Chinois by the American poet Roger Hunt Carroll  to whom I am indebted. He tells me that they were themselves ‘inspired’ by Chinese poems that, himself knowing no Chinese, he had an elderly Chinese waiter translate more or less word for word into English. He is not even sure himself who the ‘original’ Chinese poets were !  Hopefully, whoever they were, they would not be offended.   S. H.