The Man Who Feigns Deafness Poem by Nguyen Khuyen

There's a man I know who feigns deafness.
He throws such wild looks that you think him dumb as well.
Who is to know he is deaf only during working hours?
That kind of deafness, I would love to learn.
In a crowd his face is wooden but at night he has a monkey's ear.
He roams in the rear garden, the front yard, smoking a pipe, chewing a betel cud, drinking five or seven excellent cups of teat and quoting verses from the Kieu.
He is all ears one moment and deaf the next.
Who wouldn't like to be that kind of deaf?
But it's not easy to be deaf that way:
Ask him how, and he will just say, 'Eh?'