On Sharing a Husband (By Hồ Xuân Hương)

Screw the fate that makes you share a man.
One cuddles under cotton blankets; the other’s cold.

Every now and then, well, maybe or maybe not.
Once or twice a month, oh, it’s like nothing.

You try to stick to it like a fly on rice
but the rice is rotten. You slave like the maid,

but without pay. If I had known how it would go
I think I would have lived alone.


From SPRING ESSENCE: THE POETRY OF HO XUÂN HUONG (Copper Canyon Press, 2000) Translated from the Nôm by John Balaban