that elixir is beyond creation

I sit alone sad at my whitening hair 

Waiting for ten o'clock in my empty house 

In the rain the hill fruits fall 

Under my lamp grasshoppers sound 

White hairs will never be transformed 

That elixir is beyond creation 

To eliminate decrepitude 

Study the absolute. 

 

[Wang Wei {699/701 - 761} trans. by G.W. Robinson ‘Sitting Alone on an Autumn Night’, from Zen Poems in Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets]