Chen Lin Poetry of Great Wall
Drinking Horse at the Foot of the Great Wall
Author By: Chen Lin
A drinking horse at the foot of the Great Wall,
The chill of the water hurts its bones.
Go talk to the local officer,
Stay not, young man, is all his advice.
The authority follows only its own schedule,
Hounding more and more countrymen into the project.
Who should have died in the battlefield,
Rather than labouring gloomily here day and night.
The Great Wall is extending all the time,
Well exceeding three thousand miles in length.
At the construction sites engaged many men, young and healthy,
Widows, nothing but widows stay behind thousand miles away at home.
Some were clever and did wrote back, telling their wives,
“Marry soon and wait no more. Take a good care Of your new family and remember — Your lost husband once in a while”
