If a Mountain Lion Could Sing stands as the first major English translation of poems written by China’s greatest lyric poet, Xin Qiji.

World-renowned translator Red Pine has found a new dance partner. His latest bilingual collection, If a Mountain Lion Could Sing, boasts 126 poems by swordsman, visionary, and China’s greatest lyric poet, Xin Qiji. Paying respects at the poet’s grave and visiting the very places where Xin composed his stanzas—the cassia trees of the Wu River, houseboats along the Yangzi, mountain monasteries—Red Pine makes a physical and spiritual exercise of translation. Written over 800 years ago, and to melodies since lost, Xin’s verses still leap across centuries, mapping real and interior landscapes, relaying universal concepts of duty and solitude, love and nostalgia. Though “true mirrors are hard to come by,” Xin’s poems serve as haunting reflections of a man who sang with “heroic abandon.”