Letter from Jiangnan

by Bai Hua
     trs. by Fan Jinghua

Breeze always winds into the ten-mile spring, Rain soaks only the
depth of one lantern.
The one who watches Du Mu climbing a tower Might well be a
man from Germany.

Eating can be a good game to kill boredom, The heat becomes
bitterness,
The old letter burns!  I touch, and it gasps.

To preclude flies swarming in Shanghai spring, I was sent to the
suburban countryside
And given a pair of chopsticks to pick maggots Out of the winter
fecal vats.

Alas, visitors to the immortals, do you really need
To make up the discontent of a clear day?
A gang of runners should upgrade to a congregation.

Notes:

1) a man from Germany refers to Germany sinologist Wolfgang Kubin, whose doctoral dissertation focused on the Tang Dynasty poet Du Mu (803–852).

2) The third stanza has its source from a memoir of the Great Cultural Revolution by Chinese lexicographer, Professor Lu Gusun (1940–2016) from Fudan University: “In chilling winter day, we went to fecal vats in the countryside of Jiangwan, using chopsticks to pick up maggots, and this was to prevent the maggots from becoming flies in the spring.”