Rongzi (Jung Tzu) is the pen name of Wang Rongzhi, who was born into a Christian family in Jiangsu Province. She married the poet Luo Men in 1955 and worked at Taipei International Telecommunications Bureau until 1976, when she retired. She now lives in Taipei.
Rongzi started publishing poetry in 1951 and was one of the first women poets to publish in the postwar period. She later joined the Blue Star Poetry Society. To date she has published ten books of poetry in Taiwan and China.
—A LOVE SONG
I wonder why the nightingale has restrained her song
And when the morning star retired.
Why don’t you tie a bell to your nimble feet
To wake me early from deep slumber?
Let the morning breeze blow away my heavy drowsiness,
And let me with the jade cup of my life
Drink to my heart’s content the sweetness of morning.
The space of morning is wide and free.
Following its gait, blithe and proud,
I wish to take up a bamboo basket
And gather rainbows from the great earth.
Oh, why don’t you tie a bell to your nimble feet
But let me sleep till I wake from deep slumber
When the morning light has spread all over the hills?
It dawns on me that your beauty has a thousand faces
And I wish to study your countenance.
—The sun is soon overhead.
Where can I seek your traces?
(published 1953)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)
NO MORE BLOSSOMS FLY IN OUR CITY
No more blossoms fly in our city in March
Everywhere crouches that gargantuan construction beast—
Sphinx in the desert watching with sarcastic eyes
And the urban tigers howl
From morning till dusk
From morning till dusk
Are the rain of smog the thunder of urban noises
The discord between gears
And the strife between machines
Time is shattered to pieces Life fades all the while….
Night falls Like a huge venomous spider, our city
Spreads its shimmering web of temptation
Trapping the footsteps of pedestrians
Trapping the lonely hearts
And the void of night
Often I sit alone in the dreamless nightscape
And watch the nocturnal city below like
A gigantic diamond brooch
Displayed in the window of the commission house
And waiting to fetch a high price
(published 1965)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)
A faint echo too becomes the past Looking up
One sees only the cold starlight illuminating the horizon
There’s a green lotus in the watery field
Meditating and humming, under the moon and the stars, in solitude.
The thing in itself is to be appreciated
And laudable is the fragrance A green lotus
Has the haze of moonlight and the classic beauty of stars sinking in a lotus pond
Through all that mud and marsh, staying so fragrant and fabulous!
Quiet thoughts spread wide Veils for the face
Deter strangers from looking at each other
There’s shape in the shadow and shadow in the water
A lotus, still and silent, watching the firmament.
Purple is going into dusk a long window facing the setting sun
Even though your lotus pad is full of dewdrops you never weep
Still a luxuriant green still a soft flame
Rising from light cold ripples.
(1957; revised 1968)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)
The debut of a fluttering bird
Makes continuous flaps with arcs of a bat’s wings
Joining to form a perfect circle
A green little umbrella is a lotus pad
The red is the morning sun the black the evening clouds
Umbrellas of different colors are blossoming trees
That can walk….
An umbrella is held to shield off the sky
Screening the hot sun screening the rain
Screening the transparent notes of simple nursery rhymes
A little world of its own, free and at ease
I hold an umbrella to open or shut at will
When shut it is a stick or staff when open a flower or a bower
In which is hidden a quiet me.
(1976)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)
WHEN ALL LIVING CREATURES GO BY
The great earth lies like a brown bodhisattva
A single hazy light seeps through the distant sky
The winds are zither strings
Whose footprints are those countless traces on the sand?
Listen, all of a sudden the zither changes its tune
Those familiar tracks of yours have veered
So the winds play another key and similarly
Wipe out the shoeprints of former generations
—When all living creatures go by
(1982)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)
THE INSECT WORLD—PORTRAIT OF THE GRASSHOPPER
I sit alone at the tip of summer’s bough
Tilting my legs high up I am also
A reigning king facing south.
It’s high summer and
My kingdom prospers
I am reluctant to exchange my green world of plenty
for the polluted world of Man!
They—
Have to swallow the exhaust of smog and
Sulky air of their own kind
While I get to enjoy twinkling drops of nectar
In the company of happy fragrant flowers.
(1983)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)