Digging

Digging

Squatting, my wife was digging in the field

While I was digging, sitting on the ridge

My wife was digging for the sweet potatoes

And I was digging for poetry

With an easy dig

My wife dug out a sweet potato

But I spent a long time

Managing to dig out only a single line

The more my wife dug the more delighted she was

But the more I dug, the more frustrated I was

The field where my wife had dug for the sweet potatoes

Had furrows, long and short

Meandering like lines of poetry

Whereas the poems I had dug

Had each line so knotty

That it resembled the sweet potato, gnawed by the ground lizard

Ren Yi (Ren Zhilin), born in the 1950s, is from Shanghai. He is now deputy secretary-general of the Pujiang Literature Society, deputy general manager of Pujiang Literature Exchange Centre for Literature and Arts, Minhang, Shanghai, and an editor of Pujiang Literature.