Departure

Departure

Mu Dan, 1941

tr. Huiwen Zhang, 2010

You taught us peace and yet the necessity to kill,

To embrace first what is awful.

Knowing the “Human Race” sufficed not, we also learnt

Ways to torture it; in a rigid battle array,

Body and soul squirming like a troop of animals.

You taught us this new beauty. For

Those that we kissed have been robbed of freedom;

Good days ended, yet approaching the future

Gave us despair and hope, gave us death,

For the manufacture of death must be eliminated.

You bestowed upon us a soft soul and yet commanded it to sing

Stiff sounds. An individual’s grief and joy

Were manufactured and thus had to be ignored

Denied and stiffened; this is the meaning of life.

One poisonous link in your grand scheme

Imprisons us in the present. Oh Lord!

In the crooked dogtooth tunnel you make us go forth and back and

Forth, make us believe your nonsense poems

Truths.  Yet we are faithful,

You give us treasure and treasured sorrow.