The Half-Recluse

Far better to be a half-recluse.

Po Chü-i (A.D. 829),

translated by Arthur Waley

More than a thousand years!

I thank you, first and last

Of poets to define

A way of life I see

As not remote from mine.

More than a thousand years!

I feel that I belong

Within the self-same age

That once gave you, and now

Gives me half-hermitage.

More than a thousand years;

But now the break has come!

The communists condemn

The least reclusiveness:

We are no use to them.

But not a thousand years

Are needed to perceive

That best a rebel heart

Receives, resists, creates,

In pulsing half apart.