Starve The Poets (By Yi Sha)

by Yi Sha
(translated by Denis Mair)
 
As easy as you please, again
You start to talk of farming
Of proper tillage, and dripping sweat
Like rain in the march of seasons,
Until the wheat bears harvest.
Do you think the kernels are yours,
From the tears you shed for women?
Does the wheat-awn seem as tender
As whiskers against your cheek?
That year you crowded the road with your wanderings;
The wheat plants in the North grew on their own
Then danced to curve on curve
Of scythes in the sun,
Severing stalks, their own necks,
Severing last ties to the land,
Letting you be yourselves.
The poets have eaten their fill,
A wheat field stretching out of sight
Exudes a rich scent in their bellies.
The city’s consummate idlers
Are blue-ribbon farmers of poetry.
In the name of sun and rain
I raise this cry, wheat plants:
Starve them,
The damned poets!
But first of all starve me:
Polluter with ink-stained fingers, I play my part
Planting my bastardly strain in the field of art