Classic Poem

The year you turned sixty you resigned your post
to realize your simple wish to write and publish a book.
At seventy, it was unfortunate, you lost your heir
and took up your medicinal spoon again energetically.
At eighty, with two grandsons ready to take over your work,
you left all to them, private and public, large and small.
As in the old days you now read crab-walk letters,
the older the more thorough, by the lamp or sundial.
This year, in the fifth autumn of Tempo,
we have a banquet for “rice” and I express my joy
as the family and students gather together.
The cup makes the rounds of seats as in “Respect the Old,”
recalling our guests when you turned three score and ten.

How many of them again are on these felicitous mats?
The ones then in junior seats are now honored guests,
honored guests at the time are now gone forever.
By what luck is it, your child, now half a century old,
entwines your lap like a sweet gourd vine.
Drunk again and again, full of joy, I make this song
that you may live a millennium like Red Pine Man.