Wild Court

An international poetry journal based in the English Department of King’s College London

‘Taotie’s Mouth’: a poem by Yucheng Tao

Taotie’s Mouth

Everyone is searching,
yet forgets their own guilt.
We gorge ourselves on desire,
yet fear we will fall into its endless cycle.

In the distant East,
饕餮 (Taotie) is a monster of darkness—
nothing but an infinite mouth,
no fur, no solid body, only hunger.
It devours everything within its reach,
crawling through the invisible web of sin.

It rises from our suffering and our desires,
like the shadow we each carry.
Every one of us
bears a sin called greed.


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