Careless Perfection

According to Lin Yutang,

both Po Chuyi and Su Tungpo

"desperately admired" Tao Yuanming,

a poet of nature who wrote a single love poem,

a poem thought by Chinese dilettantes to be

the one "blemish in a white jade."

Can a poet be faulted for calling a woman

carelessly perfect in beauty?

He chose to long for her by envying

the candle that glowed upon her

beautiful face, the shadow

that followed in her every move.

Yet the nature poet Tao Yuanming, at home

with the sudden turning of seasons,

now feared the shadow in darkness,

a discarded fan that once stirred her hair,

feared the candle at dawn. At last believed

that for beauty he had lived in vain.