Feng Zhi

Look at this shadowy, brownish-green fruit,

which never blossomed in scarlet,

just as I have pined for thee, and written many verses,

and we have never blossomed in love.

If you want to taste it, taste it!

It's no better than your favorite peaches and pears and apples;

My poems don't have a pleasing sound either,

and when I read them, they are raw on my tongue.

The last line of the poem, rawness, is used very skillfully, and the subtlety of the word is that the poet is chanting about thoughts and the pain of thoughts. Feng Zhi at this time constantly chants about love, loneliness, and the bitterness of searching, and he knows how to cherish his own loneliness, sorrow, ordinariness, incompleteness, and bitter fig, which is the only gift he can give but is also willing to give to his beloved, and dedicate to the world--this gift at the same time is that is his young, pensive, and full of passionate self. The young Feng Zhi already knew that love, life, and the search for the meaning of life is a long, deep, and ordinary road. Feng Zhi's poems are exactly such figs--green and astringent, just like real youth and life, without pretense or self-deceit. He sings of his love and hatred for the gloom, uncertainty, emptiness and bitterness of youthful life, and carries the true feelings of life in his verses, which are arranged just like the steps of life through thorns, wilderness and desert. Feng Zhi's poems in his early years are a quiet and powerful start on the road of endless questioning and seeking of life.