Pure sensory data

I thought the watery look and odd combination of light and dark here matched the poem well. Credit: Ajay Goel, Flickr.

[Title lost]
Liu Shenxu 

Here is a path that disappears into the clouds. Alongside it is a brook, green and swollen with spring. The flowers have come, and every now and then they float downstream, giving the water a fragrance which can be smelled far, far away.
Here is a quiet door on the mountain track. It opens into a secluded study, deep in shady willows, where the light each day is cool and clear on the sleeve of my shirt.

阙题  刘眘虚
道由白云尽，春与青溪长。
时有落花至，远闻流水香。
闲门向山路，深柳读书堂。
幽映每白日，清辉照衣裳。

---

Liu Shenxu was a high Tang poet, writing during the first half/middle of the 8th century. Little is known of him other than the ten or so poems of his that survive.

This poem feels like an exercise in pure sensory meaning. It rhymes and maintains form, but parallelism is broken, and the poem doesn’t develop and comment on a theme, as a conventional poem might. Instead, it just describes a place, drawing the focus in ever tighter, from fragrant water down to cool light on linen. A prose poem seemed the natural way to respond to and recreate this beautiful, slightly impersonal sketch.