Days come and months go by, time hurries along;
By the movement of the year-star (Jupiter), it is now almost twelve years.
Winter or summer, we lie in frost and sleet;
When the water freezes and the grass withers I mark another year.
In China we have a cyclical calendar to mark the full and new moon,
But in these far-off lands the sun, moon, and stars only hang meaninglessly in the sky.
Many times the migratory geese come and go;
I am brokenhearted as the moon wanes and again grows full.