To My Friends Li Tan and Yuan Hsi

We met last among flowers, among flowers we parted,
And here, a year later, there are flowers again;
But, with ways of the world too strange to foretell,
Spring only brings me grief and fatigue.
I am sick, and I think of my home in the country —
Ashamed to take pay while so many are idle.
. . . In my western tower, because of your promise,
I have watched the full moons come and go.