Poems of Mao
25. Good-bye, God of Plague [July 1, 1959]
Good-bye, God of Plague
[two shih pieces in seven-word regular, Chi Lu]
[translated by Nancy Lin]
Thoughts and fancies come crowding to my mind after I read in the People’s Daily, June 30, about the stamping-out of snail fever in Yuchiang County. I remain awake all night, when presently soft breeze brings along daylight warmth and the first gleams of the sun fall on the window. Scanning the faraway southern skies, I pen these lines in true gladness.
1.
To what avail were our riches –
Green hills and waters blue?
The curse of a worm
And nothing could our Hua To do!
Villages sank in reed and rush;
Life drained away fast.
House after house desolated,
Ghosts sang triumphant.
Sitting here,
I speed with the earth
Eighty thousand li a day;
Circling the skies, I survey
The endless galaxies of Milky Ways.
Three Star Cowherd – he is still anxious
For word on the God of Plague.
When lo! man’s woe and fury’s mirth
Are both set to flight
With the on-flow of time!
2.
Myriad willows dance in the breeze of spring.
Land of Celestials –
Six hundred million strong
And each a sage, a titan!
At whose bidding –
Rains of rosy petals
Swell into a joy-surge;
Hills of primal green
Turn bridges of fond dream.
The firmament merges with the Rocky Five
At the fall of our silvery hoes;
The earth rocks with the Three Rivers
As our arms of steel strike.
Whither your retreat, O Lord Pestilence?
Our holy candles and paper boats
Shall light your way blazing to the skies.
Notes [by Nancy Lin]
Snail fever or schistosomiasis was a wide-spread endemic disease in pre-liberation China that affected some 350 counties in 12 southern provinces, involving more than 10 million direct victims and upward of 100 million indirectly afflicted. For instance, in Lantienpang, a district of 50 square li in Yuchiang County, northeast of Kiangsi, more than 3,000 died of the disease in 50 years, leaving behind straggling survivors of swollen bellies and shrunken limbs over 20 desolated villages and 14,000 mou of wasted farmland. The call for an extermination campaign came in 1955. Yuchiang was the first county to achieve the objective.
Hua To: a famous surgeon and doctor in the Period of Three Kingdoms. In a talk with medical workers March12, 1966, Mao said:
“Medical workers in the past refused to contact the masses and showed little faith in them. But haven’t ways of stamping out the snails been invented now by the masses? Hence the remark in my poem: ‘The curse of a worm and nothing could out Hua To do.”
Eighty thousand li a day: Differences in interpretation occurred. The poet made the following observations in a letter to Chou Shih-chao, November 25, 1958:
“there is ground for the figure given. The diameter of the earth is around 12,000 kilometers, i.e. 80,000 Chinese li – the distance made by the earth’s rotation (namely, distance made in a day’s time).”
Star Cowherd: Niulang, a legendary youth who went up to heaven to become Star Cowherd on the Milky Way (known in astrology as the constellation of the Bear) and who is supposed to have a reunion with Star Weaving Maid on the opposite bank on the Double Seven Eve (7th day of the 7th moon) every year.
“China has created innumerable deities in the past 3,000 years”, Mao is quoted as saying. “The Cowherd and the Weaving Maid alone are of the working people, two superb images of the working people belonging to an entirely different category from that of the God of Plague.”
A sage, a titan: The original wording of the poem is Yao and Shun, two ancient rulers known for their sagacity and might. As the phrase is used here in figurative sense, a free rendering in English is advisedly given.
Rains of rosy petals: a literary expression for spring time rains which carry fallen flowers with them. This line together with the 3 lines that follow alludes to floods that are being turned into water power and inaccessible regions into developed areas.
Rocky Five (Wu Ling) refer to the chain of mountains running through the 4 provinces of Kiangsi, Hunan, Kwangtung and Kwangsi – so-called because of its five particularly well-known ranges.
The Three Rivers literally refer to the Yellow River, the Yangtse and the Pearl River, used here to represent rivers in China in general.
Holy candles and paper boats are burned on occasions of popular exorcisms against evil spirits. Holy candles for ming-chu, i.e. candles used for sacrificial purposes – a term dating back to the ancient classic Rites of Chou; it has been wrongly understood as ‘candles lit’ etc. by commentators and translators.
[next - 26. At Shaoshan]