Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 10:50:20 +0200 (MET DST)
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens)
Subject: Two poems by Mao Zedong


Hello all,

How about enlivening this list (I hope) with a little
poetry? Particularly in connection with the present
two-line struggle among those who're stating their 
adherence to the political line of Marx, Lenin and Mao 
Zedong, those two poems by Mao which I'm reproducing below
to me seem quite appropriate as some "comments in
beforehand" to this debate.

Yesterday, I posted them in English, German, Spanish and
Swedish to various newsgroups, in #10en, de, es and se of 
my "UNITE!" (etc) series. I include here also the note with
which I introduced them.

[Note:
The two following poems by Mao Zedong, written in 1965, in my 
opinion are still of interest today. All readers who have some 
knowledge of political matters probably will understand their meaning.
Two comments may be useful.  "Modern" revisionism at the time was 
sometimes also called "goulasch communism". Two years earlier, in 
1963, a certain agreement between the USA, Great Britain and the Soviet 
Union was signed.  - The poems were first published, in the Chinese 
press, in January 1976. - RM]



*Chingkansan Revisited*

- to the tune of Shui Tiao Keh Tou
May 1965


I have long aspired to reach for the clouds,
Again I come from afar
To climb Chingkangshan, our old haunt.
Past scenes are transformed,
Orioles sing, swallows swirl,
Streams purl everywhere
And the road mounts skyward.
Once Huangyangchieh is passed
No other perilous place calls for a glance.

Wind and thunder are stirring,
Flags and banners are flying
Wherever men live.
Trirty-eight years are fled
With a mere snap of the fingers.
We can clasp the moon in the Ninth Heaven
And seize turtles deep down in the Five Seas:
We'll return amid triumphant song and laughter.
Nothing is hard in this world
If you dare to scale the heights.



*Two Birds: A Dialogue*

- to the tune of Nien Nu Chiao
Autumn 1965


The roc wings fanwise,
Soaring ninety thousand li
And rousing a raging cyclone.
The blue sky on his back, he looks down
To survey man's world with its towns and cities.
Gunfire licks the heavens,
Shells pit the earth.
A sparrow in his bush is scared stiff.
"This is one hell of a mess!
O I want to flit and fly away."

"Where to, may I ask?"
The sparrow replies,
"To a jewelled palace in elfland's hills.
Don't you know a triple pact was signed
Under the bright autumn moon two years ago?
There'll be plenty to eat,
Potatoes piping hot
With beef thrown in."*
"Stop yuor windy nonsense!
Look you, the world is being turned upside down."


(Originally published in the January 1976
issue of the journal "Shikan" [Poetry])

* This refers to "goulash." - Peking Review Ed.

[Reproduced from Peking Review No. 1 / 1976, 02.01.76] 



     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---