Live fish—someone's New Year's gift to me;
soon, they will be dry fish from the river!
But I can't bear to cut them into a thousand slivers,
and I pity their “cry from the dried-out carriage rut.”
So I toss them into the pond, and they swim back and forth:
now they have water to keep them wet.
In thunder and rain, they will leap to the sky
and turn into dragons, spitting pearls!