The poet here cites all the pleasures of life now closed off to these deceased: the "blazing hearth, " the lisping children welcoming their father home, climbing on him "the envied kiss to share.

We could hear the cicadas and the crickets and the tree frogs and the night birds calling out, all the breathing creatures looking for something in the dark.

The Li men jostle to sell me supper, all of it live: white-breasted waterhens, little egrets, a black-crowned night heron and a spot-billed duck, the only duck where male and female look alike.