A house at a crossroad, beside a grove, composes
     another house to take as a husband

     mistranslation of "Awaiting Husband Stone"
     by Wang Jian (768-833)

I made him appear
floor, wall, and wall,
doorframe, thatched roof, my dear one,
he stood, open-eyed, open-shuttered,
he sat down, shutters flapping, clap! clap! his beams shook, his startled grasshoppers leapt
   from the thatch,
he lay down, my love, his four corners, his shouldered ceiling, my husband,
lay himself down, at the crossroad, by the grove, at my side.

Nina Lindsay
Northwest Review
Volume 44, Number 2 / 2006

Copyright © 2006 by Northwest Review.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

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