South    North

Living in the North    prickled with mountains

As well as many spacious places

I am actually more used to surveying tiny things

With my stocky, compact body

In a lower place    in various valleys and dales

Those more minute than I are mole crickets, ants and some rats

That crisscross the humble underground

Producing sounds penetrating into another world

Those more calm yet timid than I are wild beasts

That egress and ingress the mountain woods

Chased by poachers    and on a moonless windy night

Get lost occasionally in the wilderness

There are times when I scale the mountains    look high up

Stray in the wilderness    just like a wind

And look afar into the place where mists rise

Nevertheless I will not think highly of this universe

Nor will I get totally immersed in bewilderment

Staying in the North all year    I witness eye-openers everywhere

When the North-loving migrant birds return again

They bring tidings of the South    where

Heavy rainstorms have caused disastrous floods this summer

And many people have perished in the horrid heat

My valleys and I    even the entire North

Can’t help falling into prolonged quietude

Thinking of many inherently low Southern places

Our hearts mourning    start to plummet heavily

Towards the South

And like a bird whose heart ruptures abruptly

Or a never-weighted steelyard weight

Are descending from the celestial arc

Speedily

Balloon and Emptiness

Earth is like an unexpected balloon

With a solid inside    and an empty outside

Floating in the endless emptiness

Earth wafting in the boundless emptiness like a balloon

With a heavy head    heavy wings    and a heavy heart

Has so easily bumped a plane down

And smashed an eagle like blowing off dust

And even tossed an inadvertently toppled hill

Into the ocean like dumping trash

And thereby returned the emptiness

They once occupied pointlessly

To the infinite hollowness

Which only the universe can match

Therefore rendering Earth wafting like a balloon

In the limitless emptiness

A shape as sensitive yet solid as a heart

And the truth of the entire emptiness

Verifiable by a balloon

Harder to rupture than a heart yet explodable

By excessive internal emptiness

I Have Captured Another Monster

In these mountains    the tigers have all perished

Even the stealthily prowling wolves have vanished

The legendary old black bear eating devils instead of men

With its gall removed by an indomitable hunter

Shuddering with a whole lot of uncontrollable fat

Has fallen to his death    

Rolling down the mountain like a giant ball

Afterwards a man clambers up the mountain range

To capture monsters    runs up and down for ages

And lives in the darkness of strata and the chasms of giant boulders

Like a savage    and also a deity of the mountains

Whilst the legendary monsters are mysteriously latent

For many years    this monster hunter

Exhausts his wits in vain

One day this monster catcher    indefatigable and unflinching

Came to the city like a monster at high noon

Emanating the foul smell of a monster    I had encountered only once

Looking at his monstrous appearance    I felt somewhat embarrassed

“I have captured another monster!”

The words I had been thinking for so long

Could not be uttered in the end

Horse

You are the one

Born in an era with no one riding horseback

Destined to be solitary for a lifetime

Foreordained to be a wild horse    racing around

Indifferent to meadows    with no purpose

Running until you cannot run any more

One with talents but not values    starving

Galloping    hunkering down

Indolent and free in the wilderness

One watches wildflowers

Too tired even

To take more bites of grass

You are the one

Becoming an old steed

Miserably kithless and kinless    boney nag

You still cannot stop

Still run over and over and over

Ceaselessly

A wild horse like you

Has the destiny of a horse

A horse’s kismet