Sometimes words come hard, they resist me
till I pluck them from deep water like hooked fish;
sometimes they are birds soaring out of a cloud
that fall right into place, shot with arrows,
and I harvest lines neglected for a hundred generations,
rhymes underheard for a thousand years.
I won’t touch a flower already in morning bloom
but quicken the unopened evening buds.
In a blink I see today and the past,
put out my hand and touch all the seas.
My dwelling is often covered by frost and snow,
The foreign winds bring again spring and summer;
They gently blow into my robes,
And chillingly shrill into my ear;
Emotions stirred, I think of my parents,
Whilst I draw a long sigh of endless sorrows.
Whenever guests visit from afar,
I would often make joy of their tidings;
I lost no time in throwing eager questions,
Only to find that the guests were not from my home town.
Cooking beans over a stalk fire,
beans are weeping in the boiler:
Beans and stalks from one root,
why should we kill each other!
We present this work in honor of Dragon Boat Day.
I swim in that long river
And rest on its bank.
I climb that high hillcrest
And cut the wild thorn.
Alas! I journey afar,
Alone I travel, in utter solitude.
I look up at that temperate wind
And shed tears like the rain.
Poets Corner 