I was born among the deer, my nature delights in caves and cliffs.
Visiting my sick daughter in the city, my steps are truly halting and slow.
If the gods would take pity, medicine must prove its effect.
Then I should return to my old cottage, who would love to enter this clamor?
The summer heat is fierce as steaming and roasting, the low house like a cage.
Stretching like an inchworm's form, drooping like a wooden rooster's appearance.
At dawn I received your letter, bearing news of a new prefecture's teaching post.
Recalling our same-year kindness, in a blink it's like a dream awakened.
I, at the beginning of Duanping, presumptuously served in the Penglai halls.
Criticizing scales offended the divine dragon, plucking whiskers provoked the frontier leopard.
One dismissal stripped three offices, for years cut off from salary and grain.
My crime lies in reckless folly, now I suffer others' binding and beating.
Why, for twenty years, have you had no chance to reach the highest comparison?
Now you go deep into the south, precisely because you cannot be cunning.
The crowd of youths grows more clamorous, swift feet show off their leaping strides.
We tread on goat-gut paths, the terrain we pass is extremely rugged.
The official sea runs with a thousand sails, fair winds propel oars and poles.
We sail a single reed, with no way out of the muddy mire.
The ways of the world grow daily more difficult, the great hall's beams and pillars crumble.
Border dust grows daily more chaotic, assault ladders set with arrows and cannon.
Adverse tides turn land into abyss, bitter drought makes water fly to cellars.
Starved corpses fill the thoroughfares, proud sons indulge in violent explosions.
You look upon this—what time is it? To hold office is like bearing a cangue.
Yet you caution me to hide my light, past faults not to be repeated.
Fine jade does not fear the fire, straight timber does not fear being bent.
Fate should accept poverty or success, duty should uphold loyalty and filial piety.
After long separation, reciting my poem, does your heart alone feel no solace?