in your painting
there is the rock
that nature’s licked into two plates
and that slides into the lake;
the rock carries with it the branches
with its show of flowers
like a suitor come to woo the hands of the gentle lake
and in the clear water below
two fish are active in their element -
they are objective, they are like scholars

and I am here, dear Bada Shenren,
three hundred years after you
(the dead have ever been my friends)
I too am come out again to see the world
like you did after forty years,
dear Zhu Da -
but like then as now, the world is not kind
to the recluse who comes to meet it