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.