In the following poem, she sketches the caricature of the bonze who must, in principle, devote himself to asceticism:
Head shaved clean, clothes unhemmed
Before him, glutinous rice cakes, offerings of the faithful,
Behind, six, seven nuns
A cymbal struck here, a going struck there,
Psalmodies in all keys
And the prayer draws out, drags, prolongs
By dint of austerity, perhaps, he will be a Venerable.
And proudly sit on the lotus throne.
Even the Buddha “on the lotus throne’ is not spared. She lets herself go in “The silent monk’:
A life of abstinence, heavy as a block of stone
To make it lighter, a mere nothing is enough.
The boat of compassion would have safely reached the Western Shore
If some mischievous wind had not come and tangled the rigging.
With her slashing verse, Ho Xuan Huong rejoins the “ca dao’, the popular songs in which the peasants’ wisdom and mischievousness find free expression:
The bonze saying his prayers
Catches sight of a beauty with a basket
Who goes catching crabs
The bonze’s heart
Fills with dreams.
Leaving the Sacred Book
He runs after the damsel.
Which way has she gone?
And our bonze walks backwards and forwards
Telling his beads.
