Vacant white spiral shell, there aren’t
Any grains of dust left in your eyelet.
Yet when in my hand, it has a thousand
Kinds of feelings: there are billows
surging in the centre of my palm
O, sea, I am deeply moved by your
Divine skill and blazing star,
You can be so fine to thread through
Beads! Yet I can’t help saying:
Hey, your cleanliness like this!

Behold, this lake of mist
Has soaked me like water,
Like soaking a fake of feather.
Like a small building, I let
The wind, the catkin and swallows
Be drilling me through like shuttles.
There might be curiosa in the building
And leaves shuttled through by whitebaits,
From the word “love” to the word “grief”—
I become hollow yet splendid!

Exquisite, white spiral shell, or I?
When delivered to the beach by the sea,
I’d like to be loved by some primitive
In case of falling into one’s grasp.
If I want myself to be exchanged
With a goat, the price ratio will be 30 to 2,
Yet I am still worth a flat peach.
I am afraid of being picked up by contemplator:
Vacant white spiral shell, you
Have stirred the tide of my worry!

I have dreamt of your waning:
The stone steps dripped through by raindrops,
The well railing jagged by a straw rope…
Time has been abraded through by patience!
Let yellowness return to the little chicken,
Let greenness return to the little phoenix tree,
Let rosiness return to roses.
Yet, look back at the roadside
On the thorns of the tender rosebush,
Your old tears are still hanging.