53
TO HIS SERVING MAID
Whom he discovered throwing perfectly good food into the garbage pail, e. g., remnants of lotus salad, pickled snails, and fragments of birds nests which might have been made into nourishing soup.
TRANSFIXED with anguish
(O Daughter of Iniquity)
I stood when I saw the sarcastic moonlight
Gild the contents of your
Unthrifty garbage can.
O wasteful and slackminded offspring
Of a cheese-witted peasantry,
Fallen in evil ways
While in service to the Peking profiteers,
When half the world is starving
You would toss away
A practicable mouse-patty
Or an undamaged rice-cake—
When you die
And your miserable wraith
Approaches the Pagoda of the Immortals
