30.

To My Wife and Child

Zheng Chaolin dedicated this poem to his wife Liu Jingzhen and their son Frei. It describes the couple’s wartime flight to the mountains of southern Anhui after Zheng’s release from prison in 1937, and Frei’s death from TB in 1945. According to local archivists in his native Longyan, it was written on the back of a family photograph.¹

To the tune of ‘Catching Fish in Your Hands’

In my mind’s eye, a pair of swallows perching on a beam,

one newly fledged.

In Ganquan war flames light the night,

war fog blankets miles and miles of countryside.

Alas the anguish! 5

The birds swoop gracefully on scissor-tails

without the slightest change in their demeanour.

A pert and clever chick,

bright and alert,

everything he said and did 10

was agreeable and kind.

Heaven, why did you take my boy?

Tender buds die quickest

in the frost, in storms the supple twig is soonest lost.

Tossing and turning in my bed, I moaned and groaned for three full years, 15

wordlessly weeping bitter tears,

but to what avail?

Like a meteor briefly flashing soot

across a clear night sky,

youthful beauty is never hard to overlook. 20

And when we fly not wing to wing but each apart,

the nest in ruins,

does not the tragedy augment?

_______________

‘To the tune of’: A ci by Xin Qiji.

Line 1: A reworking of a line by Shen Quanqi.

Line 4: Ganquan is probably a reference to the mountainous Ganquan area in Jiangsu, not far from Shanghai, where Zheng lived between 1940 and 1952.

Line 6: A common image in Song poetry.

Line 21: A reference to Zheng’s enforced separation from his wife after 1952.