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To a Friendly Stranger
After I visited a distant officer with my dismal old dear, we entered Uncle Buck’s Diner, at noon, in Belvidere.
The waitress was gracious. The delicacies were delicious.
What a great surprise, when I went to the cashier to pay our dishes -- Somebody had paid for us!
I don’t know what’s the reason you paid our meal:
Out of sympathy, saw our intimacy, or just to be friendly?
You can’t know what your deed means to me:
As an unfamiliar foreigner, awkward also very weird, always feeling inferior.
And you are an anonymous stranger. The cashier even refused to disclose your gender.
We had never met each other. We won’t once more encounter!
What a good-hearted person you are! How can I ever thank you hereafter? May other people treat you for me later? May Heavenly Lord bless you forever!
Today, I drive the same way
back to this place,
to present this poem to the waitress;
entrust her to pass it to you,
to repay your grace.
Someday later,
together with my other verses,
it will be published,
as a collaged collection,
to commemorate this event.*
Many thanks, my stranger friend and this lovely country.
May the whole world and all the people be as friendly?
* The event happened on June 9, 2004. I revisited the diner on June 16 the same year.
This poem was translated into Chinese on June 9, 2014
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