"Despair" by Meng Chiao, copyright © 2000 by Sam Hamill. Reprinted from Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese, translated and introduced by Sam Hamill.
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Feature on Hamill's translations.
Despair
Despise poetry, and you’ll be named to office.
But to love poetry is like clinging to a mountain:
frozen, holding tight, facing death,
days of sorrow followed by sorrow.
The bourgeoisie are jealous of those
who love poetry: they flash teeth like knives.
All the old sages are long since dead,
but bureaucrats still gnaw their bones.
Now I’m frail, dying like a frond.
All my life I sought a noble calm,
a calm I could never achieve.
And the noisy rabble mocked me.
