Friday 6 April 2012

A Poem: Jia Doa's "The Swordsman"

David Chiang, righting wrongs in Chang Cheh's Have Sword Will Travel (1969).

For Ten Years I have been polishing this sword,
Its frosty edge has never been put to the test.
Now I am holding it and showing it to you, sir:
Is there anyone suffering from injustice?

(Jia Doa, 779-843 AD, translation from James Liu's The Chinese Knight Errant [London: Routledge, 1967].)