“I love watching

on a bright, crisp autumn day

cloud shadows crisscross the steppes,

and, scattered like stars

throughout the deep-lying hollows,

white-haired goats

crop and chew the sprouting grass, with no one

to care for them;

a newly laid dirt road, bordering a small brook,

bends into dappled woodland

and emerges farther in the distance

upon a sun-drenched slope…

we are not going to visit long-parted friends,

but  because, on this unfamiliar path,

the shadows play with sunlight, 

so we stroll leisurely, feeling

a simple, carefree, exhilaration…

Clouds mass together in the empty sky,

surge and scramble;

raindrops drift down mixed with sunlight,

then the rain falls harder and  harder,

still, the steppes stretch out in four directions

bathed in the sun’s glow.”

– Ai Qing

Excerpt, Wandering On An Autumn Day, Ai Quing Selected Poems.