5.

On My Thirty-Fifth Birthday

A qilü

1936

Chen Yi wrote this poem on 1 August, to mark his thirty-fifth birthday. At the time he was leading the guerrilla struggle in the Wuling Mountains in southern Jiangxi and experiencing hardship, which he contrasts with what he imagines to be the smooth progress of the main body of the Red Army in the north following the victorious conclusion of the Long March. Like Zheng Chaolin in his poem ‘When Yin Attains Its Limit (Poem 21)’, he uses the image of the revolving Earth to argue the inevitability of revolution.

Our main army has marched splendidly west,

while for us in the south war breaks out again.

Half the fatherland is drowned in blood,

many of my good friends lie in their graves.

Enemies track and attack us night and day.

By luck I am still alive;

ten thousand died as heroes.

When carried to extremes, all things must change;

the Earth will turn and redden.