Poet Black Light
The last lilac, heather and purple leaf plum seen
Mountains
At about 14:00 on March 2, 2021, I climbed three public flowers and trees in full view of everyone, in order to fulfill the long-lost spring of a dying poet.
I first folded a purple leaf plum on the fourth sidewalk tree outside the east gate of the high-tech hospital. Scanning the code to measure the temperature into the east gate, and then picking the heather in the south of the two trees outside the outpatient building, a sunny tree. This is the poet's favorite plant, not only the poem: "Dawn." The past stops at the corner of oblivion / Magnolia opens the car of the morning light / Heather stretches out its tender arms / / The mountains and rivers return to green, the wind knocks on the door / My favorite March / Send the clearest day of the year" ("The Car of the Morning Dawn"), and even more, named his daughter "Nan Nan". After passing through the outpatient building, I folded a branch of lilac with buds in front of the inpatient building.
Because of the winter and the epidemic, the main entrance of the inpatient department is not open, sharing the passage of the medical technology building next to the body, there are three nurses on duty in the corridor of the inpatient department, after checking the nucleic acid test certificate, I took two or three steps step by step, and soon went up to the third floor, through the L-shaped corridor, to Room 123, where there are only 5 beds, which is a special care ward. I saw the poet's sister sitting on a small stool at the foot of the bed through the lookout window on the door, and I knocked on the door three times, and when I saw that she did not move, I knocked three times harder, and then I got up. She came to open the door, and the toilet paper on the door lock fell, and the poet was now extremely fragile, too afraid of noise, and the family members were doing their best to take care of it.
"Auntie, this is Purple Leaf Plum, this is Heather, it's his favorite, this is Lilac." Handed me the flowers and said, "That aunt I'm gone." ”
I picked up the toilet paper on the floor and closed the door again, and went back to the first-floor aisle to bow to the nurse.
This is actually the second time I have entered this doorway today. I had visited the poet two hours earlier and had accompanied him for two hours. I came again and again, just to fulfill his "spring."
At eight o'clock in the morning, I contacted the poet's wife in advance, but I was refused: "Don't use it, the heart is received, you are all good to Teacher Xu, he knows it in his heart." Take care of your dad and I'll talk about it when I need help later. ”
The poet Hei Guang, whose real name is Xu Jin, was my leader in the Shaanxi Provincial Information Consultation Center, but he insisted that our subordinates call him "Teacher Xu". Because of the literary contract, we can be regarded as a special love affair. Knowing that my family was poor and had many kindnesses, he not only recommended the publication of my novels and study works, but even helped me introduce my work when the unit was withdrawn and the personnel were separated. Because I have a large amount of food, every time there is a meal, I am specially asked to eat enough, and the grace of knowing the encounter is all over the place.
His fourth admission was on February 27, but I have had trouble getting out the day before. In mid-January, before the Spring Festival, my father lost his foot on the stairs of the construction site, resulting in nine fractures in the chest and six fractures in the front and back. Although the operation has been successfully carried out before the holiday, the compensation for work injuries has not been resolved because of the mutual blame of large and small labor services, and it is necessary to take it to the disability appraisal in case of recourse to the law.
The grace of nurturing, the grace of knowing the encounter is difficult to complete, first raise and then meet is already a shame, now get rid of the body, even if there is no permission, how can you not come to see each other?
At 12 o'clock, I took the bus from the Taibai Campus of Northwest University and took the subway three times to rush to the hospital. Under the heather tree at the door, I repeatedly dialed the teacher's mother's phone and WeChat voice, but there was no answer, but I asked two other colleagues who had come to visit, and I knew the bed number.
It was the poet's sister who opened the door, and we knew each other. In the winter of 2014, Shi Gong was critically ill, and because I was young and strong, I went to Xingping Bed for several weekends to watch the night. The poet has reached a time when he cannot leave, and is accompanied by his wife and daughter at night, and during the day he is cared for by his sister and brother-in-law.
"Young man, you are here, Teacher Xu has talked about you several times, and he is looking forward to your coming."
I sat down in the chair at the head of the bed and went to pull Teacher Xu's hand, the palm of which was so thin that only the bones and muscles remained.
"You sit for a while, he wakes up quickly, doesn't sleep much longer, and soon he's going to go to the bathroom."
The poet has woken up during the conversation. I called him, and he turned to me: "Bolt, here you are." ”
He was about to get up, I asked to lie down for a while, and my sister said, "He wants to go to the toilet, get diuretic injections, and expect him to go in and out less so that his legs are swollen." ”
My sister brought him clothes to put on, but he wanted to put them on. My sister said to me again, "He's glad he came, he wants to sit for a while." ”
I changed my sister to put on his coat. Help him to the toilet, stand in front of the toilet, and he must let us out. His dignity is at stake, and no one can force it.
My sister and I waited outside the door. From time to time, my sister flicked the door and looked in. Tell me, "No help, no pee pot." ”
Be sure to wash your hands when you go to the toilet. All I could do was help him turn on and off the tap and hand over the towel. Coming out of the toilet, he sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand and made me sit on the sofa on the nightstand next to the bed, and my sister took a small quilt to cover his legs, and he asked me, "How many degrees outside." ”
I pulled out my phone and showed him the report: 11 degrees. I said about the spring outside: "The magnolias, purple leaves and plums in the city have all bloomed, and I went to see Professor Huang Liuzhu in the rain a few days ago, and these flowers in the south have not yet bloomed." After a few days of rain, the flowers in the city were somewhat defeated, but after the weather, the air was particularly fresh and the sun was beautiful, which was very good. ”
The poet then clamored to wear a jacket: "After eating, I want to go out with the plug." ”
The arms were already a little stiff and needed to be worn off for him like a child. I had to drill the sleeve in reverse to pick up his hand. I could feel him trying to cooperate. To relieve his tension, I chatted with him. I say:
"At the beginning of the year, I asked my daughter-in-law to set up a public account for pure literature, and the poems in the collection of poems "Born to Die" were being published one after another. This public name can be used as a literary self-reserved place for our grandfathers, and at the same time hope that it will take over the function of the black light blog, carry forward poetry, and inherit poetry. ”
The poet was about to look at it, and I pulled out my phone and turned it over to him, and he pointed to the glasses on the coffee table in front of the sofa and asked, "Are those my glasses?" ”
My sister said yes, I gave it to him, but he wanted to sit on the sofa. My sister said that it would be convenient to eat later.
It turned out that sitting on the sofa was so that I could put my arms on my thighs and look good at my phone. The arm was already weak enough to lift the phone in front of him.
I watched him read the published "Death of rags", "Sky Cemetery", "Qingming Horse's Head Qin", "Jiangshan Beauty" and several poems that had been published one by one, and then browsed the titles and covers of other posts, which were some of the short articles I recently promoted about Zhou Zuoren's memories of Lu Xun. I said: "Originally, I wanted to do a special topic of Lu Xun first, with the intention of starting from the indiscriminate place of modern and contemporary literature, but I did not expect that it has now become a special issue for Shaoxing people." ”
The corners of his mouth smiled.
The poet's ancestral home is also Shaoxing, Zhejiang, and Lu Xun is not only the same hometown, but also close to the neighbor. "Born to Die Appendix Family and Personal Early Years Resume 1960 (2 years old)" writes:
A national famine spread, and many provinces around Shaanxi were found to starve passers-by. In early summer, escorted by his mother, he moved back to Xieqiao Lane in shaoxing county with his grandmother and sister. The ancestral residence of the Zhou clan is 2 miles away from the "Qiu Jin Tomb" of the late Qing Dynasty. Fifteen years later, admiring Qiu Jin's chivalry, he worshipped alone twice. The ancestral residence of the Zhou clan is also 2 miles away from the ancestral residence of Zhou Shuren (Lu Xun), and it is in a deep and long laneway. My mother's grandmother's family name is Lu, and Zhou Shuren's grandmother's family is also surnamed Lu; when I grew up, I sometimes joked with my mother: "The ancestors of the two families may have been the same Shaoxing master."
I reported the second thing to the poet, saying that professor Wang Jin of Chinese University sent a message on the fifth day of the first month of the first month, saying that he wanted a book cover of "The Complete Compilation of Shaanxi Ancient Pagoda", and the Phoenix Publishing House published an essay for him to use as an illustration, which contained an article expressing his deep gratitude to your old classmate. He said:
"Zi Jin is modest."
This leads to the fifth day of the first lunar month. At that time, there was no official work, Xu Ye, director of the provincial government counselor's office, and Yang Jianhui, director of the Joint Organization Office, invited the Malay president of Northwest University Press to take me with me to the home of Xu Teacher Gaoxin, who served as a special researcher of the provincial government counselor's office, and was an alumnus and a literary friend with Director Xu for many years. Director Xu once presided over the Provincial Writers Association and cherished this talented man who held a gray shovel in one hand and a poetry pen in the other. When entering the hospital, only blood transfusions and pain relief can be avoided, and other routine blood tests and CT nucleic magnetism are avoided, and it is also completely dependent on Director Xu's coordination.
After the condolences on the fifth day of the first year, the President of Malay immediately spoke to Professor Prince Jin and informed the poet of the latest situation. In the afternoon of the same day, Professor Wang Zijin sent a message.
Professor Wang Zijin is in the same class as the poet, and he graduated from Northwest University with a 77-level archaeology major, but he is nine years older than the poet. However, the seventy-two-year-old is still working hard, and the sixty-three-year-old poet can only "live to death" here.
After reading the public account, the poet went to his glasses, leaned back on the sofa, tilted his head to the window, and asked me: "Is there any wind?" ”
I opened another window and replied, "No, there is sunshine." I asked him again, "Open a little window?" ”
He nodded.
The window sash was stuck, and one was only about a quarter open, and I closed the screen again. Seeing that he couldn't stop looking out the window, I consulted with him again, and opened the window sash close to his side, and he still nodded. I said, "Winter is the hardest, it's spring now, and it's sunny outside." We humans have lived with nature for hundreds of thousands of years, and we must be like this spring flower and spring tree, and we remember the signal that the earth is still yang, and when spring comes, we will follow the vigorous growth. ”
"Spring is so good."
My sister went back and forth to get ingredients from the refrigerator under the window wall and pushed the small table in the hospital room to prepare for dinner.
While waiting for dinner, he lay his arms around the table, folded his hands under his chin, and said, "I'm like a schoolboy now." ”
Indeed like a child, so small bowl to eat. Under the tomato sauce, twenty-five thin noodles, three spinach, one quail egg, before eating and picking out two chopsticks of noodles, but added two small spoons of soup.
I asked him if he could taste the rice. He nodded. I said, "How nice is that." On January 13, before the festival, I went to your house to discuss with you about the revision of "Born to Die", and you left me to eat, saying to me: 'Plug, you have to eat well, I am eating now just to complete the task.' You looked and smiled when you saw me eating big and fast, and now you have tasted the same smell of my meal that day. After a pause, I said: "Therefore, in the depths of love, I really have nothing else to ask for, I only hope to eat well, just like the ancient poem "Walking and Repeating", everything is false, everything is 'give up and don't repeat, try to add food', and it is truly blessed to be able to eat." ”
I sat on the couch with him, watched him eat, and took a picture with his phone sideways, and the pulley of the small dining table blocked his right foot, unable to move, and wanted to take a small video, so he couldn't.
"There's salt in the noodles." After eating the poet said.
"We didn't eat, we don't know, so let's put less salt or no salt for you next time." The sister said and cleaned up the dishes, and he wiped his mouth.
My sister brought him mouthwash and empty cup again, and he rinsed it several times in a row. In order to maximize the effect of the diuretic needle, the amount of drinking water is very strictly controlled, and only a slightly larger medical medicine bottle can be used to sip a mouthful of honey water each time, but the diuretic needle must make him very thirsty, so he can't help but want to drink water.
Rinse his mouth, lean back on the sofa, I said to remove the small dining table, he nodded, but hesitated, I think there is a table in front of him, he will feel safe in his heart.
Watching my sister running back and forth, I said again: "On the fifth day of the first month of the first month, Director Xu joked: 'You have to overcome the pain now, you are very hard and pitiful, but in fact, you are very happy, there are three women around you, and all three women are deeply in love with you.' There are eighty-year-old mothers who still hurt you, there are such attentive ladies who take care of you so carefully, and there are girls who worship you. As a man, you are so happy, so you have to live strongly like Susan Sontag, live bravely, and strive to live even greater, to understand the metaphor of this disease, to light the light for humanity. Now I suddenly feel that you are not only three women deeply in love, but also a sister who loves you deeply. ”
Unexpectedly, the poet groaned for a long time and said, "Of this, only I know." ”
"Your shore is often someone else's shore." The poet said again.
Writing this, I suddenly thought about the lilacs, heather and purple leaf plumSweed I had just climbed, if they could speak, whether they would also say the same.
It's like the life and death of a human being.
The pictures in this article are from the Internet
This article was published in the Literary Observation Column of Yanhe, No. 3, 2022
![Come and find out! Those flowers and plants hidden in the winter of the SUU~[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)