Sunshine cannot move
A wide stretch of gathering clouds
Excessive rains
Shamelessly
Harass the dusk of July
Casting a huge net
Into the overflowing pond
To salvage
A moon
Thunder blasts again and again
Lightning pierces the window paper of night
A heavy rain
Shows up as forecasted
And reaches the navel of July
The village is like a small rowboat
Stranded
Within a tear
A crow in silks and satins
Upon the high twig beyond the peacock’s reach
Perches
And gets blackened
By groundless gossips on the street
As if a flying piece of charcoal
With a lamp burning
Within
Veiled in mist, my home village
Stands in the water up to the waist
Like a lotus leaf
Perversely holding up a stretch of sky
A worn-out straw hat
Shelters sunshine
And lets one rain after another
Seep through
As the setting sun pushes on the switch
Longing like dark clouds
Stuffs the entire night
People shed tears
And the sky follows suit
Tears and water
Breach a levee
The moment one past event sinks
Another bobs up
The clay Buddha crossing the river
Is unsafe
They have built a fane
And invited a figure of Buddha
Handfuls of money for incense
Stuffed into the Merit Box
Are exchanged for abundant fish and meat
And devoured
Buddha drinks
Not even a mouthful of broth
The street front clothing store
Hasn’t been open for long
Before it turns into
A beef noodles restaurant
That manages to survive several months
And then, all of a sudden transforms itself into
A clinic that claims to cure
All difficult and complicated diseases
For the whole afternoon
The wind has been hand-laundering a few cloudlets
Some trees standing on tiptoes
Grow upward
Some other trees plunge into the water
Rooting deeper and deeper downward
Some trees are the roots
Of other trees
I squat by a pond
Waiting for a fish
To take the bait
9拜佛
头磕了
香火也上了
转动经桶
唵嘛呢叭咪吽
念了一遍又一遍
佛呀
我许下的愿呢
9. Pray to Buddha for Help
I’ve kowtowed
I’ve burned incense
I’ve turned the prayer wheel
Murmuring myriad times
Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ
Oh, Buddha
What’s happened to the wish I’ve made?
The sun is like a red ball of knitting wool
That rolls overhead
Upon the pot cover of the earth
Swarms an army of ants
The cicada’s chirrup wrings dry
The remaining water within its body
The sky getting increasingly fiery
Frequently roars
At the top of its lungs
And then rain water drowns all the injustice in the human world