Wang Wei's "Suffering from Heat"

As I have noted before, I have been reading  The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry . While reading through some of it this weekend, I stumbled across this poem by Wang Wei. Given that in central Indiana we had a very hot August and that it was bone dry (really, the grass all around is the area is parched brown), the content of the poem seemed very appropriate. So....



Suffering from Heat

The red sun bakes earth and heaven
where fine clouds are shaped like mountains.
Grass and woods are scorched and wilt...