Poems of Mao
35. On the Death of Comrade Lo Jung-huan (December 1963)
On the Death of Comrade Lo Jung-huan
[a shih in seven-word regular, Chi Lu]
[translated by Nancy Lin]
I often think of the hectic days
When we were ‘fleeting over the grass’
And how seldom we found occasions to meet
Though we both were in the Red Army.
But the Long March after all
Wasn’t such an overmuch trial.
It was the Battle for Chinchow
That brought along the real test.
The sparrow in the bush, as you know,
Would forever jeer at the giant roc.
And didn’t the fluffy hen too
Itch to hold the eagle up to ridicule?
To our grief and loss now,
You’ve departed from this world.
To whom should the nation turn for counsel
When faced with Challenge and doubt?
Notes [by Nancy Lin]
The conversational tone in which the poem is written suggests a personal intimacy and a tete-a-tete communion of thoughts as found in Poem # 21 – Reply to Mr. Liu Ya-tsu, with the same effect.
Lo Jung-huan: one of the ‘Ten Marshals’ of New China. He took part in the Autumn Harvest Uprising led by Mao Tse-tung in 1927, went up to Chingkang Mountain with Mao soon afterwards and remained a faithful follower of Mao’s military line until his death in winter 1963.
Fleeting over the grass, a literary expression for fast travel with light provisions, alludes here to the swift movement and tense life of the Long March days. Lo was then a leading cadre in the political section of the First Force of the Red Army. He went with the vanguard and often had to cover a hundred li a day in face of constant enemy attacks.
“In spite of his ill health”, commented Mao once, “Lo weathered the storm of the Long March days. He not only had to fight perpetually with the enemy but also took an unflinching stand in the fierce struggles within the Party.” Mao here was referring, no doubt, to the opportunist oppositions of Wang Ming and Chang Kuo-tao.
Battle for Chinchow, October 9-15, 1948, marked the decisive turning point in the Liaoning-Shenyang Campaign. For the capture of Chinchow, the Red Army was able to drive south against the demoralized forces of the Kuomintang, culminating in the annihilation of 470,000 enemy men on November 2 and the consequent liberation of the whole of northeast China. As political commissar of the Northeast Force, Lo was the chief upholder of Mao’s strategy for the campaign as against Lin Piao’s attempt to switch the drive northward to Changchun.
Sparrow and roc: A parable in Chuangtsu (3rd century B.C.) tells of a whale in the North Sea transforming into a giant roc [a legendary bird of great size and strength] who in his preparation for a migration to the South Sea soared 90,000 li up in the sky, and who was mocked for this titanic undertaking by a tiny sparrow stalled in its bush.
Hen and eagle: derived from I. A. Krylov’s fable, where an eagle once happened to alight on the top of a hayloft and was ridiculed by a hen for having no more ability to fly higher than any common fowl.
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