MOON OVER MOUNTAIN PASS

The birds have vanished into the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

-Li Po (701 – 762) China

The poem as translated above I found in Czeslaw Milosz’s collection, Luminous Things, but there is at least one more translation, which goes like this:

MOON OVER MOUNTAIN PASS

All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other –
Only the mountain and I.

-Li Po

Which do you like better?