One of my favourite poetry books is 300 Tang Poems, a collection that I could read from cover to cover and then start all over again. In fact, that is just what I do. Of course I am reading the English translation (W.Bynner) and I understand that something will always be altered in the process. But still, there are so many gems amongst them - observations and sensibilities that seem lost to the modern mind - that one is left, often as not, in a kind of altered state.

Anyhoo, here is a seven character quatrain by the master, Du Fu.

The Garden of the Golden Valley

Stories of passion make sweet dust,
Calm water, grasses unconcerned.
At sunset, when birds cry in the wind,
Petals are falling like a girls robe long ago.