“On the Death of a New Born Child”
The flowers in bud on the trees
Are pure like this dead child.
The East wind will not let them last.
It will blow them into blossom,
And at last into the earth.
It is the same with this beautiful life
Which was so dear to me.
While his mother is weeping tears of blood,
Her breasts are still filling with milk.
–Mei Yao Ch’en (translated by Kenneth Rexroth)
found in Naked Poetry: Recent American Poetry in Open Forms