Poem
Translation

A work in progress. This version is perhaps too stripped-down. I don’t think it’s brought out the drama of the 含 properly. But I wanted to get the orioles out of the first line. It’s a very distracting word in English, whereas the Chinese word is not. It’s a very ordinary-looking and -sounding bird name. Seeing as the exciting part of this poem is in line 3, I don’t think it helps to have the reader’s attention being caught by the exotic birds in line 1. We want to build to line 3.