Yang Kaihui - Poetry

Poetry

Yang wrote poems to express her loneliness and her longing for Mao. One of them, "偶感" ("Occasional Feeling"), was written in October 1928, two years before her death, and discovered when her former residence was being repaired about 50 years later:

Original Chinese Pinyin English Translation

天阴起溯风,浓寒入肌骨。
念兹远行人,平波突起伏。
足疾可否痊?寒衣是否备?
孤眠谁爱护,是否亦凄苦?
书信不可通,欲问无人语。
恨无双飞翮,飞去见兹人。
兹人不得见,惘怅无已时。

Tiān yīn qǐ sù fēng, nóng hán rù jī gǔ.
Niàn zī yuǎn xíng rén, píng bō tú qǐfú.
Zú jí kě fǒu quán? Hán yī shì fǒu bèi?
Gū mián shuí ài hù, shì fǒu yì qī kǔ?
Shū xìn bù kě tōng, yù wèn wú rén yǔ.
Hèn wú shuāng fēi hé, fēi qù jiàn zī rén.
Zī rén bùdé jiàn, wǎng chàng wú yǐ shí.

It is cloudy and very windy; the severe coldness invades my body.
Miss you in the long distance; my feeling goes up and down suddenly.
Is the illness on your feet cured? Are clothes defending against coldness enough?
Sleep alone without any cares and loves; maybe I am also arduous and have tasted too many hardships.
No letters could reach to you and nobody could be asked.
Regret that I have no wings, or I could fly to you.
Couldn’t see you, the time that I take companion with sadness and depression would never come to an end.

Read more about this topic:  Yang Kaihui

Famous quotes containing the word poetry:

    Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
    —W.H. (Wystan Hugh)

    Art, if one employs this term in the broad sense that includes poetry within its realm, is an art of creation laden with ideals, located at the very core of the life of a people, defining the spiritual and moral shape of that life.
    Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)

    I cannot say what poetry is; I know that our sufferings and our concentrated joy, our states of plunging far and dark and turning to come back to the world—so that the moment of intense turning seems still and universal—all are here, in a music like the music of our time, like the hero and like the anonymous forgotten; and there is an exchange here in which our lives are met, and created.
    Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)