Classic Poem

The girl from Ch'ang-kan is just fourteen years old:
on a spring ramble, she comes upon a temple
from the Southern Dynasties.
With her elegant, soft hairdo she bows slowly to Buddha,
lowers her head — and drops a gold hairpin to the ground!
A young man who visits the temple that day
picks up the hairpin with its inlay of kingfisher.
He takes it home with him, not knowing whose it is,
and stands unhappily, smelling its fragrant odor
again and again.