Two Poems_Cultural Revolution_related
The Man Who Cut a Woman’s Throat
For many years, I’ve been trying to figure out
Who was that man, and how and why he did it
Had he received any training as a surgeon?
Or at least, had some experience as a barber?
No other job with a knife
Closer to a human throat
I guess that he might not be a volunteer
To perform that job
She was a woman, a wife and a mother
To cut her throat, like a hen on a holiday
Muting her voice, including sobbing
On the way from the prison to her grave
Who was he? It doesn’t matter now
When he did that job, as ordered
His salary was 37.5 Yuan, the entry level
In the People’s Government
He retired,enjoying his remaining life
A grain of sand vanished in a desert
At Her Own Expense
A Chinese coin of five cents
Today, in my homeland, not
Enough to buy even a button
That year in Shanghai
The hottest summer befell
In a narrow street, a few
Policemen, uniformed, politely
Knocked at a door
To collect a debt of five cents
The fainting mother owed
This was the cost for a bullet
The country spent on her daughter
In her dairy she wrote some words
That she must die for it, deserved
In Longhua temple, Shanghai
Flowers blossomed in blood
In 1931, Rou Shi was killed
In 1968, Lin Zhao was shot
* Rou Shi, a left-wing writer in early 20s, was executed in 1931 in Longhua Temple in Shanghai.
* Lin Zhao, a beautiful and intelligent student at Beijing University, was executed in 1968 in Shanghai.