The recent interest in the Oriental stuff

On the part of the Westerners,

The wistfulness of some of them

Who envy the simplicity and security

Of the Oriental patterns of life and

Admire Oriental arts and philosophy

Have also helped to inspire the youth

In the East with stronger confidence.

The result is simply the fairly reiteration

Of the old Biblical adage that

“The fathers have eaten sour grapes

And the children's teeth are set on edge.”

Today the young people in the East,

Being wearied of enthusiastic ardours

Of their fathers, are going back

To their native knowledge of olden time.

It is almost amusing to see in the West

The often self-conscious determination

To be really the Oriental worshipper:

To eat Oriental food with chopsticks,

To live and love in Oriental ways,

To dress in Oriental clothes and practice

The Oriental martial arts’ techniques.

It is as much of a fad and a pose

To be entirely an Oriental worshipper

Among young westernized Asians

As it was for their fathers in the past

To wear Occidental clothes and eat

With knives and forks and want to go

To Yale and Harvard and Stanford.

These modern youngsters in the East

Have worn the western clothes

All their lives and eaten western food

And they did go to Yale and Harvard,

And they know English literature

Infinitely better than their own and now

They are sick of it all and want to go back

To their ancestors’ outlook on life

And their ancient cradle of wisdom.

Meanwhile, the expression is still crude

And too influenced by Occidental style,

But the idea is already there: more often

We can see today a bird on a bamboo twig

Drawn by a European’s hand on a sheet

Of the rice paper instead of an oil canvas

With a local landscape, or a lovely pair

Of goldfish, flashing in a lotus pool

Instead of a chiselled figure of a model

Of a classical still life so much popular

In the western times past. . . Alternation?

Alternation indeed is in the world's village.