Poems of Mao
38. Two Birds: A Dialogue (Autumn 1965)
Two Birds: A Dialogue
[a tsu, to the melody Fair Nien-nu, Nien-nu Chiao]
[translated by Nancy Lin]
The whale-roc,
Wings spreading,
Strikes and soars
Ninety thousand li up
Over the goat’s horn of the hurricane.
Back against the blue,
He casts a look downward:
The world of men,
Walls and towns –
Shells pitting the earth,
Gunfire raging in space.
The sparrow in his bush
Drops prostrate and dazed.
“This is the doom, alas me!
I’ll have to flit and flee.”
“Whereto, sir, I pray?”
“To the Isle of Immortals,”
The sparrow replies,
“With palaces of jade!
Don’t you know
Two years ago
When bright was the autumn moon,
The three of us families
Did a pact conclude?
And things galore there to eat too –
Potatoes piping hot
With beef to boot!”
“Wind and baloney!
Look you, the universe is overturning.”
Notes [by Nancy Lin]
A satire written in autumn 1965, a year after the fall of Khrushchev followed by intensified Khrushchevism in Soviet Russia.
Whale-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 over the ‘goat’s horn’ (i.e. the whirling curve) of the hurricane, and who was mocked for this titanic undertaking by a tiny sparrow smugly stalled in its bush. Mao is making full use of this ancient parable – with a difference of course. The whale-roc need not be taken to mean the poet himself; it may well represent in his mind true Marxists in general. The sparrow alludes to Khrushchev and his successors.
The formal publication of the poem in 1976 signalizes presumably China’s unflinching resolve to carry on the ideological combat with Soviet Russia and the concomitant fight against super-power hegemony.
Isle of Immortals, alluding to the utopia of peace and prosperity held out by the Khrushchevians, is derived from an ancient legend about ‘Three Isles of Immortals in the East Sea’, where Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty vainly sought to procure the elixir of life.
Three families’ pact refers to the Treaty of Partial Halting of Nuclear Tests signed by the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain on August 5, 1963.
Potatoes and beef alludes to Khrushchev’s ‘goulash communism’ so-called because of a speech he made in Hungary April 1, 1964 where he likened communist society to ‘a good dish of goulash’ accessible to all.
The universe overturning alludes evidently to the current world-wide struggles for national liberation and people’s revolution as part of the historic process toward what the poet calls elsewhere ‘the radical change throughout the world’ in the ‘earth-shaking era’ of the next 50 to 100 years.
The free melange of classical vocabulary with vernacular and even vulgar is a stroke of literary audacity that carries a step further the practice shown in Poems of Mao # 33 – where it was noted that ‘the indifferent mixing of vernacular parlance and classical allusions is particularly effective in delivering the satiric punch desired.’
[next - 39. An Untitled Piece]