When one’s heart and hands are idle.
Tired after reading poetry.
When one’s thoughts are disturbed.
Listening to songs and ditties.
When a song is completed.
Shut up at one’s home on a holiday.
Playing the ch’in and looking over paintings.
Engaged in conversation deep at night.
Before a bright window and a clean desk.
With charming friends and slender concubines.
Returning from a visit with friends.
When the day is clear and the breeze is mild.
On a day of light showers.
In a painted boat near a small wooden bridge.
In a forest with tall bamboos.
In a pavilion overlooking lotus flowers on a summer day.
Having lighted incense in a small studio.
After a feast is over and the guests are gone.
When children are at school.
In a quiet, secluded temple.
Near famous springs and quaint rocks.
— by Hsü Ts’eshu
A dreaded sunny day
so I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side
A dreaded sunny day
so I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side
while Wilde is on mine
So we go inside and we gravely read the stones
all those people all those lives
where are they now?
with the loves and hates
and passions just like mine
they were born
and then they lived and then they died
seems so unfair
and I want to cry
You say: “ere thrice the sun done salutation to the dawn”
and you claim these words as your own
but I’ve read well, and I’ve heard them said
a hundred times, maybe less, maybe more
If you must write prose and poems
the words you use should be your own
don’t plagiarise or take “on loans”
there’s always someone, somewhere
with a big nose, who knows
and who trips you up and laughs
when you fall
who’ll trip you up and laugh
when you fall
You say: “ere long done do does did”
words which could only be your own
and then you then produce the text
from whence was ripped some dizzy whore, 1804
A dreaded sunny day
so let’s go where we’re happy
and I meet you at the cemetery gates
Oh Keats and Yeats are on your side
A dreaded sunny day
so let’s go where we’re wanted
and I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side
but you lose because Wilde is on mine
Cemetery Gates by The Smiths
