Spring

The toilet pots are very loud today. It is spring and the warmth is highly favorable to fermentation. Some odors are unbelievable.

At the corner of my street is an especially fragrant reservoir. It is three feet in diameter, set flush with the earth, and well filled. Above it squats a venerable Chinaman with a face such as Confucius must have worn. His silk skirt is gathered daintily about his waist, and his rounded rear is suspended in mid-air over the broken pottery rim. He gazes at me contemplatively as I pass with eyes in which the philosophy of the ages has its dwelling.

I wonder whether he too feels the spring.