12 Weasels
13 O Wind
1 Doors
3 Alone
4 A Center
6 At Least
7 Prayer
8 Old
9 Paper
A Solitary Traveler
YOU MUST NOT RUN IN PLACE
Don’t say since life is short and precarious,
you want to live effortlessly.
Don’t brag you will try to outsmart time —
every day you’ll watch movies and eat dim sum
while chatting idly with friends.
Better keep busy like the others
who work for a sack of rice or a set of clothes.
See how steady those footsteps are on the wharf,
look at the ships leaving the port —
heavy, they are still going far.
THE LONG-DISTANCE TRAVELER
Keep going: the farther you go,
the smaller you grow
in the eyes of those
who can’t walk anymore, until one day they can
no longer see you. Then
they will declare that you
have disappeared, that
your foolish choice will reduce you
to a lonely ghost in the wilderness.
Keep going, don’t turn to look back.
Always carry enough food and water
and follow no one’s map
but your own. May you have
fresh excitement every day, but don’t
linger at any charming site for long. If you are
blazing a path, do not expect to meet
a fellow traveler. If by chance
you go astray, you will still
have the sun and stars.
THE DETACHED
Still I praise those who are detached
from any land, who, since birth,
have been determined to travel far in search
of home. They get their bearings
by stars, their roots growing at the end
of the imagined sky.
For them, life is a tortuous journey
and every stop a new departure. They
know they will disappear on the road,
but as long as they are living,
death keeps them company
to the destination they have envisioned,
though they have no idea
whose maps their footprints might update.
DIFFICULTIES
Don’t mention your loss again.
Indeed, you’ve lost so many things:
home, jobs, family, a country.
You landed in such a place
where everything is strange,
where you must start all over.
Sometimes you are like a child
who has just begun to talk,
sometimes you are like an old woman,
confused, unable to collect yourself.
These years you have lived
from loss to loss to loss,
surrounded by difficulties.
But whose life, if meaningful,
is not rooted in a predicament
and made of difficulties?
Stop talking about suffering.
Sufferings are never equal —
compared to billions of people,
you ought to feel fortunate
that you can start again.
TALENT
How many people wish you were mediocre
so as to prove you are the same as they?
Now that you want to stand out,
you will have to endure pain and injury —
surely there will be fists that all at once
hit you from different directions.
But even if a whole gang attacks you
you mustn’t fight back, because
they mean to sidetrack you
and watch you rolling in mud.