The Cicada

◎ Xu Dishan

The sudden shower has drenched the cicada’s wings．So the poor thing cannot fly but crawls along on the ground．It has taken him a great effort to climb onto the prop roots of an evergreen pine, where the raindrops come sliding down upon his wings from the slack needle clusters thousands of feet above．With a short buzz, the poor thing slithers off the roots and back onto the ground.

Raindrops, are you playing a prank on him？Look, ants are coming！And wild birds will soon spot him！

1. Xu Dishan (Xu Zankun, 1893-1941), trained at Columbia and Oxford University, was a scholar-novelist whose academic interests covered history of religion, Indian philosophy, and Sanskrit literature.