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Taoist Poetry
Ts'ao Chih Juan Chi Tao Ch'ien Han Yu Ch'ang Chien Su Shih Li Po Lu Chih Yun-K'an Tzu Sun Bu-er Zhou Xuanjing Cui Shaoxuan
| Han Yu
(768-824 A.D) Was born into a literary family in Honan. In 819, he wrote an inflammatory memorial protesting the Emperor's attachment to Buddhism and was exiled to the South. |
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"Poem on Losing One's Teeth" Last year I lost an incisor and this year a molar, and now half a dozen more teeth fall out all at once - and that's not the end of it either. The rest are all loose, and I know there's no end till they're all gone. The first one, I thought what a shame for that obscene gap! Two or three, and I thought I was falling apart, almost at death's door. Before, when one loosened, I quaked and hoped wildly "it wouldn't." The gaps made it hard to chew and with a loose tooth I'd rinse my mouth gingerly. Then when at last it fell out it felt like a mountain collapsing. But now I've got used to this Nothing earthshaking. I've still twenty left, though I know one by one they'll all go. But at one tooth per year it will take me two decades, and gone, all gone, will it matter they went one by one and not all at the same time? People say when your teeth go it's certain the end'd near. But it seems to me life has its limits, you die when you die either with or without teeth. They also say gaps scare the people who see you. Well two views to everything as Chuang Tzu noted : A blasted tree need not necessarily be cut down, though geese that don't hiss be slaughtered. For the toothless who mumble silence has its advantage, and those who can't chew will find soft food tastes better. This is a poem I chanted and wrote to startle my wife and children. |
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