The Kite
Lin Hui-yin

Look, how that speck of beauty
in a flash can reach the sky!
A few flakes of color
hold a pair of wings,
the heart, adorned with a string of reds.

It sways and shakes, going higher and higher,
roaming at the sun's side,
flickering in the great void,
a small flake of a face,
but don't you misjudge it,
misjudge its strength,
it knows its direction
between heaven and earth!
It is only
a mere wisp,
a speck of beauty
like hope, like a dream, too,
a long slender thread holding tight
in the sky's vault, boundless—
pushing it to dance ever higher and higher,
moving, soaring
like a white cloud.
It knows what brings it to such heights
is not itself but the wind, only the wind!