Short Poems

Mom is smart,
But her daughter's smart too.
Mom sifted ashes all across the floor,
But I rashly carried my lover into bed and out again,
The two of us sharing a single pair of shoes.

Last night I spent beside my lover
While Mom slept by my feet.
I said, " Lover, when boating on the Yangtze, to get rice from the pot,
Lightly, lightly slip the scoop in.
The iron shovel's rough and bulky,
So slowly, slowly, draw it out. "

People laugh at me for having no old lady.
But they don't know that " when you scrub rice in a busted sieve, you get a lot outside. "
Just like a wild mountain cock that spends the night along the road,
The old bird without a nook always manages to squeeze in somewhere.

130 Saturday, 2 February 1754

Qui non est hodie, cras minus aptus erit.
Mart. [In fact , Ovid, Rem. Amor. 94]

The man will surely fail who dares delay,
And lose to-morrow that has lost to-day.

85 Tuesday, 8 January 1751

Otia si tollas periere Cupidinis arcus
Contemptaeque jacent, et sine luce faces
Ovid [Remed. Amor. 139 40]

At busy hearts in vain love's arrows fly;
Dim, scorn'd, and impotent, his torches lie.

21 Tuesday, 29 May 1750

Terra salutiferas herbas, eademque nocentes,
Nutrit; et urticae proxima saepe rosa est.
Ovid [Rem. Amor. 45]

Our bane and physic the same earth bestows,
And near the noisome nettle blooms the rose.

FROMLa Clemenza di Tito
Would you hope to gain my heart,
Bid your teizing Doubts depart;
He who blindly trusts, will find
Faith from every generous mind;
He who still expects deceit,
Only teaches how to cheat.

When cuckoo calls and I may hear,
And thrice and four times and again.

The sun just risen
Flares his wet brilliance in the dintless heaven.

Dewy fields in the morning under the sun
Stand shock and silver-coated.