31.

My Son’s Death

Zheng grieves for Frei’s death in 1945. The poem was written on New Year, but we do not know which year, although he has apparently only just arrived in prison (1952) or been moved to a new prison. The second stanza is based on a folk tale recorded in the Tang Dynasty by Pei Xing (825–880), in his Chuan qi (‘Strange Tales’), about a scholar, Pei Hang, who fails the imperial examination and roams the land in misery and despair. He meets a shamaness who knows about his failure and takes pity on him. She sends her granddaughter Yunying to fetch him water. Pei Hang is struck by Yunying’s beauty and asks to marry her. The shamaness says she has an elixir of black frost that will make her immortal if pounded with a jade pestle in a jade mortar – and that she will let Pei Hang marry Yunying if he finds one for her. Pei Hang finds such a device, and seeks out a Jade Hare (a companion of the Moon Goddess) at the Blue Bridge. After 100 days of pounding by Jade Hare, the shamaness swallows the powder and achieves immortality. Pei Hang marries Yunying and he too becomes immortal. As in the previous poem, in the second stanza Zheng starts talking about himself and his wife.

To the tune of the ‘Water Dragon Chant’

A rooster crowing jolts me from my sleep,

to greet the New Year in my new abode.

Fern frost coats the windowpane,

the cell ice cold –

no sign as yet of spring.

My darling son lies cradled in my arms,

squeezed in my embrace, but in a dream.

I think back

on how the sickness quickened –

in next to no time

he was gone.

Tender buds die quickest in the frost,

while old and ailing trees escape its wrath.

Using your slight frame

and nimble fingers,

you dodge and fend off the demon of disease.

Jade Hare at Blue Bridge

pounds the black frost

and gives it to Yun Ying.

‘When will you return’, she asks Pei Hang,

‘to take me by the hand

to the pure land?’

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‘To the tune of’: A ci by Su Shi.