With time I become lazy

With time I become lazy about writing poems.
Now my only company is old age.
In an earlier life I was a poet, a mistake,
and my former body belonged to a painter.
I can’t abandon habits of that life
and sometimes am recognised by people of this world,
My name and pen name speak my former being
but about all this my heart is ignorant.

Wang Wei (701-761) tr. Tony and Willis Barnstone and Xu Haixin.

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