“If you ask me abruptly
Why write poetry
Why not do
Something useful
Then I won't know
How to answer you
I am like a goldsmith hammering day and night
Just so I can extend pain
Into a gold ornament as thin as a cicada's wing
I don't know if working so hard
To transform sorrows into
Shimmering words and phrases
Is also
Beautifully worthwhile.”

— Xi Murong

"Poetry's Value", in Where Books Fall Open: A Reader's Anthology of Wit & Passion (David R. Godine Publisher, 2003), p. 56

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Xi Murong 1

Taiwanese poet and painter 1943

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