Living people are soft and tender. Corpses are hard and stiff. The ten thousand things, the living grass, the trees, are soft, pliant. Dead, they’re dry and brittle.

So hardness and stiffness go with death; tenderness, softness, go with life.

And the hard sword fails, the stiff tree’s felled. The hard and great go under. The soft and weak stay up.

Note UKLG: In an age when hardness is supposed to be the essence of strength, and even the beauty of women is reduced nearly to the bone, I welcome this reminder that tanks and tombstones are not very adequate role models, and that to be alive is to be vulnerable.