The shifting shadow of a stain on your rigid lines.
To Handpainted Chinaware
Distorted ducks, smirking women and potshaped blossoms
Fastened to pale plates, you are dreary symbols of those who painted you.
O ducks, you were made by women
Who sway in and out of the waters of life,
Content to catch morsels of food from birds flying overhead.
And you smirking women, were painted by men
Who unrolled little souls on plates,
Gave them faces which could not quite hide their ugliness ...