Meng Jiao sees the cold as a terrifying killer

Which may explain the breakfast drinking

Chill River (3)
Meng Jiao

At dawn I drank a cup of wine,
Then walked on snow across the creek.
The waves had frozen into knives
That slit the flesh of ducks and doves:
Their nesting feathers were strewn about;
Their blood and cries had sunk in silt.
I stood, unsure what I might say,
And intoned my moans without sound.
This frozen blood mustn’t start the spring—
There’ll be no balance for its life.
Cold blood can’t be the mulch for flowers—
They’ll well up like a widow’s tears!
How dark this brambled village is,
Dead from cold, too frozen to farm.

孟郊  寒溪·其三
晓饮一杯酒，踏雪过清溪。
波澜冻为刀，剸割凫与鹥。 
宿羽皆翦弃，血声沉沙泥。
独立欲何语，默念心酸嘶。 
冻血莫作春，作春生不齐。
冻血莫作花，作花发孀啼。 
幽幽棘针村，冻死难耕犁。

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Meng Jiao (751-814) possessed a weirder imagination than most of his contemporaries. Sometimes he wrote touching short verse on pure Confucian themes. But sometimes he poured invective on insects, and when he wrote on traditional topics like the turning of the seasons, his images were just a little more extreme than anyone else’s.