On Hearing Her Play the Harp
Her fingers of white jade by a window of snow
are glimmering on a golden-fretted harp
and to catch the quick eye of Chou Yu,
she touches a wrong note every now & then.
- Li Tuan, China, 8th Century
When we read this poem in our World Literature class earlier, I remembered why I fell in love with Literature in the first place; I love it for those precious, fleeting moments that are broken down through words so precisely, emotion by emotion, action by action, until all that if left is that moment’s stark and absolute beauty.
