Luo Fu (Lo Fu) is the pen name of Mo Luofu, who was born in Hengyang, Hunan Province. He joined the military during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) and moved to Taiwan in 1949. After graduation from Cadre Academy in 1953 and a brief stint in the marines, he worked as a news editor at a military radio station. From 1965 to 1967 he was assigned to a post in Vietnam. He retired from the navy in 1973 as a commander; the same year he also graduated with a B.A. in English from Tamkang University. He has been a full-time writer and translator since.
Luo Fu started writing in mainland China in the mid-1940s. While stationed in southern Taiwan in 1954, he founded the Epoch Poetry Society with Zhang Mo and Ya Xian and served as the editor of the Epoch Poetry Journal for more than a decade. Like Ji Xian, Luo Fu was a controversial figure involved in many literary debates in the 1960s and ’70s. His poetry has been immensely influential in Taiwan and China.
Standing alone under a pale setting sun
Black hair lifted by the wind,
but a slender shadow stands still
It is a little cool below the city wall,
a little lonely
I am a chimney longing to fly
Head lowered, I gaze at the long moat
The water brimming, meandering for thousands of years
Who has had me imprisoned?
Every afternoon I gaze up
At the white clouds’ footprints in the sky
I yearn to travel afar; Oh! that long river, those blue mountains
If I could be a wild crane chasing the clouds
Or even a fine speck of dust
But I’m just a shadow cast below the city wall
—yielding loneliness to others
(1956)
(translated by John Balcom)
1 Simply by chance I raised my eyes toward the neighboring tunnel; I was stunned
At dawn, that man rebelled against death with his naked body
Allowed a black tributary to roar through his veins
I was stunned, my eyes swept over the stone wall
Gouging out two channels of blood on its surface
My face spreads like a tree, a tree grown in fire
All is still, behind eyelids only the pupils move
Move in a direction most people fear to mention
And I am a bitter pear tree, cut down
On my annual rings you can still hear wind and cicadas
2 In reply to those who knock, the brass ring answers with the glories of the past
My brothers will come and drink the anxiety filling my brow
Their thirst and hunger like an indoor plant
When I squint, metallic sounds
Clang inside the walls, fall on the guest plates
Afterward it’s an afternoon of debate, all sorts of filth is revealed
Language is just a pile of dirty laundry
They are like wounded beasts unable to find permanent shelter
If the tree’s silhouette were sundered by the sun
Its height would make me feel as solemn as when I face the setting sun
3 Like tree roots subject to nobody’s will
But still struggling to lift the darkness filling the mountains
Like wild strawberries indifferent to eugenics
Allowing their offspring to wander over the marsh
Scolded by servants, I finished many dawns
Oh, you grower of grapes on the rock, the sun leans over you
When I reach to deeper strata, clutching lively root hairs
Then I’ll gladly drown in your blood
To be the skin of your fruit, the bark on your stems
I’m humble as the number on a condemned man’s back
4 Joy, it always resembles someone’s name
A weight concealed within, at the edge of the unknown
Grain creates a crisis in the embryo of an illicit marriage
They say the demeanor of my tongue
Is enough to cause insanity in all the piranhas of the Amazon
Therefore all change is predictable
Everyone can find the fingerprint of a name after it is teased
Everyone has a few customs like receding footsteps
If your laughter rings untrue
Then I’ll kill all songs, including the joy
(1965)
(translated by John Balcom)
An egret
Reads Les Nourritures Terrestes in a rice paddy
It circles a certain point, swirling like fog
Lowering its head by chance
It snaps up a cloud on the water’s surface
Contemplation is nothing more than
Pondering whether or not the sun is a nihilist
Lifting its left leg, it wonders
If its body should swing into the fog
Or beyond the fog
It spreads its wings and the universe follows, drifting upward
Dawn is a song, short and bright
Igniting itself in the fog
If the horizon line rises to bind you
It can only bind your wings, not your flight
(1966)
(translated by John Balcom)
Anyway, only a petal of the setting sun remains in his eyes
There’ll still be time tomorrow to break the mirror
He stands reverently at H-town
A poplar flies around him
Casually looking up, he sees
Bone ashes drifting from a chimney
Or is it butterflies?
He wrings his hands and ponders
As the whiteness beyond the window becomes a myriad of colors
He is the sole hero of a thousand tales
Washing his hands may only create another woe
Turning his palms up … look!
Scales but no fins
What kind of fish are they?
Later, squatting under the eaves
He eats a fruit called the moon
Spitting the crushed seeds into the sky; they become stars
On the ice-cold tip of his tongue
Is the pure scent of burnt snow
Later he kicks a stone, waltzes
Along the wall, around the mouth of a dried-up well
And looking down
He no longer sees his own face
(1968)
(translated by John Balcom)
the evening bell
is a small trail
travelers take
down the mountain
ferns
along steps of white stone
chews its way all the way down
if this place were covered with snow …
but all that’s seen is
a single startled cicada rising
to light the lanterns
one by one
all over the mountain
(1970)
(translated by John Balcom)
1 Pale is the moonlight’s skin
But the skin of my time slowly blackens
Peels away layer by layer
In the wind
2 A raincoat from before the war hangs behind the door
A discharge order in the pocket
The night-blooming cereus on the balcony
Blossoms in vain for one night
The wound of time continues festering
So serious
It cannot be cured even by chanting a few lines of the dharani mantra
3 Some say
Hair has only two colors:
If not black then white
What then the tomb grass, green then yellow?
4 Our kites
Were snatched away by the sky
None have returned in one piece
The string is all that remains in our hands
Broken yet unbroken
5 Pain
Proves we age in time
Roots warm the sleeping soil
The wind blows
One by one the bean pods burst
6 At times I vent my anger before the mirror
If only
All lights in the city were extinguished
I’d never find my face there again
I shatter the glass with my fist
Blood oozes out
7 We sang war songs on the boulevards that year
Heads high, chins up, we proudly entered history
We were stirred to the quick
Like water
Dripping on a red-hot iron
The names on our khaki uniforms
Were louder than a rifle shot
But today, hearing the bugle from the barracks nearby
I suddenly rose, straightened my clothes
Then sat down again, dejected
Softly keeping time with the beat
8 Reminiscing about the old days
When we fought with our backs to the sea
…….
Twilight falls
Horses gallop away
An old general’s white head
Is seen
Slowly looking up
Out of the dust
9 Wading through the water
Our bodies made of foam
We suddenly raise our heads
The twilight sun, beautiful as distant death
On the water’s surface
Reflection of a giant bird of prey
In a flash it’s gone
Can we swim the sea within ourselves?
10 In the end I took out all the bottles
But it didn’t help
With what little wine remained
I secretly jotted a line in the palm of my hand
It suddenly froze
As severe winter broke in my body
The fire is dying, am I supposed to feed it my bones?
(1979)
(translated by John Balcom)
Stones shatter
Heaven is startled
Frightened stiff, the autumn rain freezes in mid-air
Beyond my window, I suddenly see
A traveler on a donkey arrive from Chang’an
On his back a cloth sack of
Horrifying images
Before his arrival, lines of poetry
Fell like hail
Beyond my window, I again hear
Xihe, the charioteer, tapping on the sun
Oh, such a thin scholar
So thin
He resembles an exquisite wolf-hair writing brush
His large blue gown billows in the wind
Welling into thousands of waves
I mull over quatrains, quatrains, quatrains as if
I were chewing five-spice beans
In your impassioned eyes
Is a jug of newly brewed Hua-tiao wine
From the Tang dynasty to the Song to the Yuan to the Ming and to the Qing
At last it is poured into
This small cup of mine
I try to stuff the seven-character quatrain that you are most proud of
Into a wine urn
I shake it up, then watch as the mist rises
Language dances drunkenly, rhymes clash chaotically
The urn breaks, your flesh shatters
Screeching ghosts are heard on a vast plain
The howls of wolves are carried over thousands of miles
Come, sit down, let’s drink together
On this blackest night in history
You and I are obviously not from among the run-of-the-mill
We aren’t troubled by not being included in the Three Hundred Poems of the Tang Dynasty
Of what use are the nine grades of official rank?
They are not worth bothering about
Weren’t you hung over that year?
Vomiting poetry on the jade steps of noble houses
Drink, drink up
The moon probably won’t shine tonight
For this once-in-an-eon meeting
I want to take advantage of the darkness to write you a difficult poem
Incomprehensible, then let them not understand
Not understand
Why after reading it
We look at each other and burst out laughing
(1979)
(translated by John Balcom)
Yesterday following the riverbank
Strolling slowly I came upon a place
Where reeds stooped to drink
In passing, I asked a chimney
To write for me a long letter in the sky
Though carelessly writ
My heart’s intent
Shone like the candlelight at your window
Still somewhat obscure
That cannot be helped
Because of the wind
It matters not if you understand my letter
What matters is
You must, before the daisies wither
Quickly lose your temper, or laugh
Quickly find that thin shirt of mine in the trunk
Quickly face the mirror, combing your soft black charm
Then light a lamp
With a lifetime of love
I am a flame
To be extinguished any moment
Because of the wind
(1981)
(translated by John Balcom)
Someone living abroad once said: “Last night I heard a cricket chirr and mistook it for the one I heard in the countryside of Sichuan.”
From the courtyard
To the corner of my room the cricket sings
Chirrup, chirrup
Suddenly it jumps
From a crack in the stone steps
To the pillow where, white-haired, I lay my head
Pushed from the edge of yesterday
To this corner of the world today
The cricket is heard but not seen
I search everywhere for it
No trace in the blue sky
No sign in the earth
Even in my breast I can’t find that little ticker
The evening rain lets up
The moon outside my window
Delivers the sound of woodcutting
The stars roil
Chirrup, chirrup
The cricket’s song is like a purling rill
Childhood drifts downstream
Tonight I’m not in Chengdu
My snoring is not a longing for home
And the chirrup in my ears weaves an unending song
I can’t recall the year, the month, or the evening
In what city or village
Or in what small train station I heard it
Chirrup, chirrup
The one I hear tonight surprises
Chirrup, chirrup
Its song
Meanders like the Jialing River beside my pillow
There is no boat for hire so late at night
I can only swim with the current
The waves at the Three Gorges reach to the sky
Monkeys cry on both shores
Fish
Spicy fish on a blue porcelain platter
Chirrup, chirrup
Which cricket is it that really sings?
The Cantonese one seems the loneliest
The Sichuan one, the saddest
The Beijing one, the noisiest
The Hunan one, the spiciest
But
When I wake
It’s the cricket in Sanli Lane that
Sings the softest and most dearly of them all
Chirrup, chirrup
(1985)
(translated by John Balcom)
Grasped then cast
The die spins
A frightful whirlpool
The gods are silent
The hand opens
Begins to sweat
Heaven and earth
Black and yellow
In a bowl
falling
rolling
rolling
spinning
As the stars lose their footings and fall
Their startled cries can be heard
From a black hole in the Milky Way
Sides with indented marks
Roll
Jangling rate of probability Motion equals limitless vitality
Existence in all its forms
Around and around on the wheel of existence
Around and around it goes
Turning, crawling
On that sorrowful course
Before the hand opens
The gods are silent
The gods are silent
When the temple bells ring out
One after another
The universe, held in the palm of the hand,
Slowly shrinks into
An egg
A stone
A cube
Of rolling uncertainty
No one can say
What will be lost
Yesterday’s boundless sea
Tomorrow’s mulberry orchard
Or the observing sky
Of eons of endless change
In the hand
As yet unopened
Rages a tempest
The struggle between life and death
Or just a metaphysical game
A classic filled with typographical errors
Neither to be believed
Nor denied
Released
It falls
Spinning
A seductive whirlpool
Software and hardware
Analysis and reason
The Book of Changes and astrology
All useless for knowing
How our lives are arranged—
Where we will board ship
Where we will disembark—
And even more useless for determining
If those deep red marks are
Scars or birthmarks
Thrown casually
It rolls and spins
Rolls back to the very beginning
The universe
Primeval chaos
Veiled in mist
The gods silently
Looked down at
A frightful whirlpool
(1985)
(translated by John Balcom)
From a thousand miles away
I’m mailing you a pair of cotton shoes
A letter
With no words
Containing more than forty years of things to say
Things only thought but never said
One sentence after another
Closely stitched into the soles
What I have to say I’ve kept hidden for so long
Some of it hidden by the well
Some of it hidden in the kitchen
Some of it hidden under my pillow
Some of it hidden in the flickering lamp at midnight
Some of it has been dried by the wind
Some of it has grown moldy
Some of it has lost its teeth
Some of it has grown moss
Now I gather it all together
And stitch it closely into the soles
The shoes may be too small
I measured them with my heart, with our childhood
With dreams from deep in the night
Whether they fit or not is another matter
Please, never throw them away
As if they were worn-out shoes
Forty years of thought
Forty years of loneliness
Are all stitched into the soles
Author’s Note: My good friend Zhang Tuowu and Miss Shen Lianzi were engaged to be married when very young, but because of the war they were separated, unable to communicate with each other for more than forty years. Recently a friend managed to deliver a pair of cotton shoes to Zhang. The shoes were made and sent by Miss Shen. Tuowu received them as if receiving a wordless letter full of unspoken thoughts from home. He wept, beside himself with grief. Today Tuowu and Miss Shen have both grown old, but their love is everlasting. This poem was written from the point of view of Miss Shen, and for this reason the language has been kept simple and clear.
(1987)
(translated by John Balcom)
After liberation
The rows of sycamores on Chaoyang Gate Avenue
Occupied the Beijing
Fall
Though transplanted from France long ago
Their coughing still sounded of home
The grammar of their wind-borne talk fell by the wayside
After free verse was shunned
The sycamore leaves wrote
Nothing but some
Rhymeless rustling
(1989)
(translated by John Balcom)
I consigned a love poem
Locked away for thirty years in a drawer
To the flames
In the burning fire
The words cried out
The ashes were silent
But it had faith that one day
The person for whom it was meant
Would read it on the wind
(1989)
(translated by John Balcom)
I BUY AN UMBRELLA JUST TO LOSE IT (A HIDDEN-TITLE POEM)*
I am going to buy an umbrella
Buy a black one—grimly unexpressive. It’s
An unending, boring day of rain. An
Umbrella and why we all need one, that’s
Just what the No-Noists are discussing in a Ch’eng-tu tea house.
To stay dry, they conclude, is simply a pretext for the truth—i.e., to
Lose
It
(1992)
(translated by John Balcom)
From an uninhabited place, the vines
Come flooding in
The pumpkin vines grow longer
While my poems
Get shorter and shorter
The pumpkin is silent
Because there is nothing to say
Its belly gets bigger and bigger
When cut open,
Half is very sweet
Half tastes like last night’s osmanthus
What does that mean?
(1996)
(translated by John Balcom)
*Li He, or Li Ho, is a late Tang poet who lived from 791–817.
*Luo Fu’s hidden-title poems are a form of acrostic poem, in which each word of the title must begin a line. Luo Fu published a collection of forty-five such poems in 1993.