novicepen:

Hopelessness

When I look in the mirror
My face frightens me.
How horrible I have become!
When Spring comes back
Weakness overcomes me
Like a fatal sickness.
I am too slothful
To smell the new flowers
Or to powder my own face.
Everything exasperates me.
The sadness which tries me today
Adds itself to the accumulated
Sorrows of the days that are gone.
I am frightened by the weird cries
Of the nightjars that I cannot
Shut out from my ears.
I am filled with bitter embarrassment
When I see on the curtains
The shadows of two swallows making love.

Translated from the Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth

(via feeltheautumn)