Neng Shui
OYSTER SHELL WALLS
At the water you live off the water
Ancestors who kept oysters
used oyster shells
to build wondrous walls.
I saw an intro,
you mix in clay, cane sugar, sticky rice and so on
ordinary people
could not afford that.
The walls that still stand now
are ancestral halls of a clan or some official.
Records state,
for one ancestral hall you need ten tons of shells.
Dazed and surprised
I looked to the village across from the halls.
A hundred-year-old white-haired lady
came tottering out,
like an oyster ghost who somehow survived.
Translaed by MW, July 2020
标签: ancestors, 能水, food, history, memory, Neng Shui, NPC, ocean, oysters, people, poetry, sea, shells, walls, water, 新世纪詩典
发表评论