Poem for Friday

Untitled (I have closed the double doors)
By Wu Tsau
Translated by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung

I have closed the double doors.
In what corner of the heavens is she?
A horizontal flute
Beyond the red walls
Blown as gently as the breeze
Blows the willow floss.
In the lingering glow of the sunset
The roosting crows ignore my melancholy.
Once again I languidly get out of bed.
After I have burned incense,
I loiter on the jeweled staircase.
I regret the wasted years,
Sick, afraid of the cold, afraid of the heat,
While the beautiful days went by.
Suddenly it is the Autumn Feast of the Dead.
Constantly disturbed by the changing weather,
I lose track of the flowing light
That washes us away.
Who moved the turning bridges
On my inlaid psaltery?
I realize--
Of the twenty five strings
Twenty one are gone.

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Friday Five:

1. How many houses/apartments have you lived in throughout your life?

Two houses, two townhouses, four apartments, four college dormitories.

2. Which was your favorite and why?

Our 31st-floor apartment in Chicago near the U of C, which overlooked Lake Michigan and had enormous windows ringing all the rooms. We could see the rainbows over the South Shore after storms and the fireworks over Comiskey Field when the White Sox hit home runs.

3. Do you find moving house more exciting or stressful? Why?

Very stressful -- we have a ridiculous amount of Stuff.

4. What's more important, location or price?

Location is everything.

5. What features does your dream house have (pool, spa bath, big yard, etc.)?

Two-story library, spacious home office, home movie theater, pool, big yard that I don't have to mow, lots of trees between my house and any other houses nearby (I don't have to rake either), big wild garden, master bathroom with hot tub done entirely in black tile with the New York skyline outlined in white, turret or other high round well-lit attic-type room where I can keep my Tarot cards and cauldron, huge playroom for kids with lots of storage space for toys, and sliding glass basement doors that open onto a beach.

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Squicks: I was going to do the survey and then I realized that in the past week alone, two things that always squicked me have somehow stopped squicking me. In the past six months alone I've gotten over so many squicks that I hesitate to commit to saying anything other than I will never read mpreg that's not Octavia Butler's "Bloodchild" and I will never read extreme torture, scat or bloodplay because they make me throw up. Otherwise, try me.

Spotted in 's LJ, How to make a Starship Enterprise out of a floppy disk!

And a fic rec for Enterprise fans, 's "Martin Luther King Day", in which Travis gets more character development than he's gotten in nearly two years on the show.