How I Let the Wuhan Girls Down Easy

(after a second-century BC poem of Hsi Chun)

My homeland and my countrymen
Have married me to exile
To die in a land I cannot fathom
The strange and silent queen of the northern men.
My palace and my castle keep a yurt
Of stinking hides;
My banquet a shank of uncooked meat;
My vintage curdled horse's milk;
My dream--a dream of my own country
That I must dream, though it lacerates my heart.
I wish to heaven I were a yellow crane
And could fly to my remembered home.

-- Stephen. K. Roney