Snail
Mother
and father gave birth to a snail
Night
and day I crawl in smelly weeds
Dear
prince, if you love me, unfasten my door
Stop,
don't poke your finger up my tail!
Wasps
Where
are you wandering to, little fools
Come,
big sister will teach you how to write verse
Itchy
little wasps sucking rotting flowers
Horny
baby lambkins butting gaps in the fence
Tr. Marilyn
Chin (translations published 2008). Ho is an extraordinary figure: a cultivated Vietnamese concubine who lived at the turn of the nineteenth century, and who wrote in Vietnamese-influenced Chinese to protest at women's marginalisation. Her translator notes that "her poems
railed against polygamy, lampooned the profligate generals and Buddhist clergy
alike. She employed brilliant wit and blatant double entendre, taking the
erotic poem to great heights."
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