the unfortunate human disorder
a palate that's never weary
of steamed piglet with garlic sauce
roast duck with pepper and salt
deboned raw fish mince
unskinned cooked pork cheek
unaware of the bitterness of others' lives
as long as their own are sweet

raise girls but not too many
once born you have to train them
smack their heads and yell watch out
beat their behinds and shout shut up
and before they learn how to work a loom
they won't touch a basket or broom
Old Lady Chang advised her young jenny
you're big but no match for your Mother

people ask the way to Cold Mountain
roads don't reach Cold Mountain
summer the ice never melts
sunup the fog is thick
how did someone like me arrive
our minds aren't the same
if they were
you could get there then

Moon set, a crow caws
frost fills the sky
River, maple, fishing-fires
cross my troubled sleep.
Beyond the walls of Soochow
from Cold Mountain temple
The midnight bell sounds
reach my boat.

The bird's call this morning was a fine bird call.
Twenty bushels an acre isn't at all a bad crop.
The good bird sang of eighteen bushels of rice.
The bird sang, deep at night—I had to tell my lord to go home.
Let's listen to that bird's auspicious call!

Head down, the nightingale
Is singing its first song.

On and on in the white clouds
he lives alone, guest of the verdant mountains;
Midday in the grove he lights the incense,
and with the cassia blossoms shares the stillness.

Bicycles! Tricycles! Nay, to shun laughter,
Try cycles first, and buy cycles after;
For surely the buyer deserves but the worst
Who would buy cycles, failing to try cycles first.

Beyond the bourn of mortal death and birth,
Two lovers — parted sorrowing on earth —
Met in the land of dim and ghostly space.
Wondering, he gazed on her illumined face:
" Alone you bear the burden now, " he said,
" Of bondage; mine is ended, — I am dead. "
With rapturous note of victory, she cried,
" The Lord of Life be praised! I, too, have died. "

Beyond my sight, deep into the darkness, the anchor chain disappears on the face of the sea.
Beyond my sight, high into the darkness, the halyard escapes toward the mast.
My light is meager. It can only shine on my blind face.
Staring at me in the distance, in the darkness I cannot see, a gull called.