In the winter of 1963, the only son of Yu Guangzhong and Fan Icun died of illness only three days after his birth. Between life and death, in just three days, the poet was severely hurt and shocked by the cruelty of life and the impermanence of fate. At a time when the young life was about to be donated to Dahua, the poet thought of his deceased mother, of Shakespeare, Li He, Shi Ji, and Ma Songpo, of the energetic students in the classroom, looking beyond the boundaries of history and time and space, and thinking about the fate of all mankind.
ghost
Gui
yu
rain
Wen | in the afterglow
—— But the rain is full of ghosts tonight. Edna St. Vincent Millay
One
"Is Mr. Yu Guangzhong at home?" Oh, are you Mr. Yu? This is the pediatric ward of NTU Hospital. I'm telling you, your baby isn't very good, the doctor said he was in a dangerous situation... What the? Did you know? You get the idea. ”
"Hey, Mr. Yu?" I tell you oh, that little kid is gone, I hope you come to the hospital right away... Dark spots have appeared on the body, and the doctor said that it is really dangerous... If you don't come again, I'm afraid you'll..."
"This is the pediatric ward, and I'm Dr. Huang of pediatrics... Yes, your child has been... It was half past twelve, and we had tried to give first aid, but... It was a cerebral hemorrhage, there was no way. Last night we beat oxytetracycline, and today your father is here... What the? Are you going to check in? Great, goodbye. ”
Two
"Today we're going to read an elegy by Shakespeare, Feather No More. Open the selected poems, page fifty-three. This is an elegy plucked from Shakespeare's late work, Cymbeline. Have you read Cymbeline? It is said that one of the books Tennyson read before his death was Cymbeline. This poem excites the troubles of life, and the tranquility of death, the impermanence of life, and the certainty of death. It excites the omnipresence and omnipresence of death (death is at your elbow). The first three paragraphs are contemplative, they are general about the omnipresence and omninipotence of death, and the last paragraph is directly to the deceased, like chanting a mantra, a bit of 'Lonely ghost, do not offend, whining and mourning!' 's taste. When you read this, you must chant aloud, like a Taoist chanting a sutra to transcend the souls of the dead. Now, listen to me read:
No exorciser harm thee !
Nor no witchcraft charm thee !
Ghost unlaid forbear thee !
Nothing ill come near thee !
"If you are nocturnal and afraid of ghosts, you may as well read out this poem of Old Man Sha to strengthen your courage." There's nothing funny about that. In another thirty years, you may appreciate the poem. Now let's start at the beginning. The first paragraph says that when you die, you no longer have to fear the poisonous flames of the sun or the cold of winter (the child's suffering is over). Even if you're a golden child, Anthony perkins or Sandra Dee, you'll be like a chimney broom, embracing the dirt. Oh, there's nothing funny about that. In less than half a century, the people in this classroom had become a pile of white bones, a handful of green silk, a piece of Pythromesen's phosphorescence (the child had three days, just three days, and stopped breathing). Sorry, maybe I shouldn't have said it so horribly, but that's the way it is (I just got back from the eloquent morgue). Youth flows from your fingers, so expensive, so sweet youth (the stone face of the morgue can't open that kind of plant)! Youth is not ivy, let you wear it on your hands like a ring. When you are older, maybe you will hold it tighter, but then you will only catch some gout and diabetes, some sour memories. Even if you weave a fishing net full of white hair, you can't catch anything...
"As soon as we came here, we tied knots, knot after knot, but we tied and untied, and we untied and fought again and again, until we were on the verge of death. In the womb, we tie a dead knot with our mother. But the nurse's scissors are in front, and the scissors of death are in the back (the child's umbilical cord has been untied and the mother will never be seen again). Then we were busy weaving love nets, and then we found that the mythical mermaid was just a myth, love was water, and no matter how dense the net could not catch a drop of blue...
"In this world, many souls are busy coming, many souls are busy going. Those who came did not have a name, and those who went were not necessarily able to leave a name. It's not easy to be able to leave a name, to stay, an adjective, like Shakespearean, harder. I got it. I see. I conquer. Then death conquered me. (The child, the child who has not yet opened his eyes, sees nothing) At this moment, the black atmosphere of death is very strong. Pauline, please close the window. What a cold wind! It seems to be his good year. A modern poet (where he goes doesn't matter where he goes, ancient or modern). A lone minister of the last generation (spring grass is green every year, and the king and grandson are not returning). An archaeologist (soon he became an archaeological object).
"Shakespeare was most afraid of death. Of the more than one hundred and fifty sonnets, not a single one does not mention death, and not one is not self-consoling. After all, his blue ink diluted the black of death. But he was still afraid of death, so afraid that he would write poems to curse the people who violated his bones. The only one who has died through the ages, and the eternal mouth is full of eternals, and he is most afraid of death. No great genius is not afraid of death. The more genius he is, the more passionate he lives, and the more afraid he is of losing it. In the dark shadow of death thought of death, as did Shakespeare. Li He so. The same goes for Keats and Dylan Thomas. Ah, I'm out of the wood again... Any questions？ How come it's already the end of class bell? Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell...... (How come it's already the end of class bell?) ）
"Goodbye, Jiang Ling, goodbye, Carmen, goodbye, Pearl (Those are pearls that were his eyes). How does this rain not stop? Thank you for the umbrella, I have a raincoat. Sea nymphs hourly ringhis knell, his death knell. (His death knell.) His little coffin. His little hands. Tightly clenched, but nothing was held. (Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.) Jiang Ling goodbye. Goodbye girls! ”
Three
How sad the South Mountain is, and the ghost rain sprinkles empty grass. Rain fell on the sea. Rain fell on the grassy slopes here. Rain fell on Mount Guanyin on the opposite bank. Rain's hands were small, wind's handkerchiefs were smaller, and the little coffin under my armpits was smaller and smaller. Small is the hand in the coffin. Held so tightly, but nothing was held, except for three rainy nights and rainy days. Tidal wetlands. The universe and I are separated only by raincoats. Rain fell on grassy slopes. The rain fell on the sea over there. Poseidon shook his death knell every hour.
"The road is too slippery. Just bury it here. ”
"No, you can't. No way. How can it be buried on the side of the road? ”
"We're almost at the top of the mountain, so let's find a corner nearby." Ah, I think it's good here. ”
"Nonsense! Are you not stepping on a tombstone? There are already people. ”
"Damn! How can even The Yellow Spring be so crowded! Not a single vacant lot. ”
"This is a mass grave." Okay, here's four feet of clearing. Right here, what do you think? Do you want me to help you hold the coffin? ”
"No, it's very light. Old Hou, just dig here. ”
Why are all the children buried in this area? Look at that monument! ”
Following the direction of the white sail, I saw a small five-foot-long raised grave. On the front stele, a few lines of newly engraved red paint:
a life in July, 1958
He died in September 1963
The tomb of the beloved daughter Su Xiaochao
Mother and grandson
Father Su Hongwen
"That little girl over there is even younger," I gently placed the coffin on the bluestone case in front of the tomb, "you see this." Born in 1960. He died in 1962. So pathetic. So pitiful, alas, how there are so many little ghosts. Death can run a kindergarten here. ”
"Then your baby is not qualified enough to enter the kindergarten." Does his mother know? "I don't know. I won't tell her yet. Alas, it is also no fate, we want a little boy. God gave us one, but in the blink of an eye he took it back. ”
"Do you believe there is a God?"
"I believe there are ghosts. I'm very superstitious, you know. I'm as superstitious asByron． Have you seen my translation of Muse in the Mediterranean? Shelley went to the cemetery within a year with two small coffins to bury...
"When I was a child, I had a junior high school classmate who died of lung disease. Later, every afternoon after school, I couldn't dare to pass by his door. As soon as it was dark, his mother leaned against the door, her face thin and white, and when she saw me walking by, she stared at me deadly, chanting words in her mouth, calling out her son's name. Like that, it seems to be laughing, afraid of the dead! Her son died in the fall. She stood under the poplar tree and waited for me every evening. This autumn stood until next year's autumn, enough to call her son for three years. Later, I changed schools to avoid this witch... Then again, a mother loves her son, and she really can't forget it. ”
"Where was that?"
"Fengdu County. Now I sometimes dream of her. ”
"Dreaming of your classmates?"
"No, it's not. Dreaming of his mother. ”
Someone was sacrificing the grave in the upper hand. A woman. I cried strangely. Nettle grass blinked its eyes in the rain. A wild dog sniffs as he walks on the top of the slope. Faintly, many small undead are calling out to their mothers. The kindergarten here is cold and damp, and no one is playing games. Only on Qingming Festival, there are parents who come to pick them up. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, when it was time for a snack. The little belly is cold and hungry. Poseidon rang his death knell on time. It doesn't matter if you go to class It doesn't matter if you leave class. Although the sea god rang a poignant death knell. It doesn't matter if you go to class It doesn't matter if you leave class. Although the sea god rang the mournful death knell, on time.
"What class is there in the morning?"
"English poems, Shakespeare's Fear No More and Full Fathom Five." The students did not know why they chose these two poems. Sea nymphs hourly ring ...... Okay, okay, deep enough. Lighten up, lighter, don't touch..."
The black mud of the shovel was thrown into the pit. Soon, the small white wooden coffin was gone. My heart shook. An iron door closed toward me.
"Go back." My companion called out to me under the umbrella.
Four
Wenxing:
It's a pleasure to receive a letter from you from the snow-sealed city of Iowa. Glad you enjoyed your love in a foreign country below zero. Holding the hand of the little lover, stepping through the snow of the white crystal, stepping on the yellow oak leaves that shattered the ground. When the wind came, she rolled up the mink collar of her coat and watched as snowflakes fell on the brim of her hat. I can imagine your pleasure, because I was also in that little college town, confined to the Hexagonal White House. To live in a different place, this heart must be the same.
I was stuck in the cold rainy season. There is all the troubles of snow, but there is no snow whiteness and beauty. Wet tide! The rain steamed and filled every corner of the space. The hair of the casuarina and eucalyptus trees was all soaked, and it was dark, and the autumn bile was twisted in the overlapping shadows of the trees. Stretch out the soles of your feet and you will not step on an inch of dry soil. Reach out your palm and the cold creeping tears will drip into your palm. Both the sun and the yin have usurped the throne. Every day is an eclipse. Every night is a lunar eclipse. Rain clouds are hanging over this already joyless city, and they are about to hatch a fierce year. In the long run, I will be able to smell the groans of the ants in my lungs, and the cockroaches will follow my spine.
In your letter you have congratulated me on the birth of a baby. I don't know how to answer you. All I can tell you is that the baby was born, but not under this roof. His roof was much smaller than this. He slept soundly, on an unusually comfortable cot. Anyway, I've given him all to the outdoor rainy season. There are no door numbers, and there are no day and night. It was a very quiet kindergarten, no swings, no boat swings. At the top of a high hill overlooking the coast. Poseidon shakes the bell once an hour. In the rain, rotten lavender turned into fireflies, and dead fireflies flowed with neurotic phosphorus. Soon he would donate to The Endless Dahua, which would be fed into the permafrost under the grass, nourishing the nine-stemmed Ganoderma lucidum or the thorns of the field. After the grave sweeper left, the whirlwind scattered the paper horse, and the horse stepped on the clouds. Lady Rose of the Autumn Tomb sang Li He's poem, and all her ears stood up miserably. The hundred-year-old osprey cultivated into a wooden charm, and competed with the mountain fish for the remnants of the sacrificial grave. Suddenly, the kindergarten returned to its original silence. The air echoed with the harsh rebuke of the poet's mother:
It's the ear that's going to vomit out the heart!
It is always the poet's mother who is most opposed to writing poetry. My mother could no longer oppose me. She had been listening under the floating chart for five years, listening to the bronze bells on the temple shake one dusk after another, when the ghosts flew up from the bottom of the tower, like a swarm of light-daunting bats. Mother. Mother. The most pleasant music is the wooden fish accompanied by the copper rock. It's raining here. Rain was falling on the distant sea. Rain poured down on the small grave top of the cemetery, and the wild daisies on the top of the grave went up and down. Rain poured down mother's tower. Rain is raining here in the strait, and it is raining on the other side of the strait. Bashan night rain. The rain that rained twenty years ago is the same underground twenty years later, this rain. Children reading ancient Texts under tung oil lamps. It rained harder. The mother who calls her child to sleep in the sound of rain. Under the same tung oil lamp, my mother tied the soles of my shoes. Oxidized to ashes, the mother who blows away. The autumn rains in Bashan fattened the autumn ponds. The teenager listens to the rain on the mountain. Tung oil lamps support the desolation of the Black Dome. (And now listen to the rain monks under the lu, the sideburns have been stars also?) Middle-aged people listen to the rain, listen to the ghost rain like trumpets, drench on the child's new grave, pour on the mother's ancient tower, and drench on the vast memories and memories. The rain was even more rampant. The roof tiles were jumping. The heart attack in the empty house was at an orgasm. The wife was upstairs in the maternity hospital, listening to the ghost rain knocking on the window, mixed with the voice of a small mouth calling out to her mother. Father tossed on the rheumatic bed, coughing weakly, sinking into the sound of the rain. Everything is far away from me, and tonight, it is close to me. Tonight's rain is full of ghosts. Wet, gloomy, drenched in black, cold and cold, miserable and miserable. Tonight's rain is full of searching, tonight's ghost rain. Falling on the lotus pond, this ghost rain, fell on the severed limbs and broken leaves of the lotus flowers. Even the Lotus Flower has the tragedy of the Nine Tribes. The lotuses were connected, and the thousand fingers of the lotus petals held one summer and let go of another summer. It was now the ghost rain of autumn nights, rushing down on the surface of the water, like a blind Chopin abusing the piano with a thousand keys. Many whipped souls cried out for amnesty in the rain. The charm shouted and the stingray answered the charm. On the night of the lunar eclipse, the lost white fox fell to his death, next to the corpse of the green beaver. Bamboo yellow. Pool cold. Hibiscus died. The groundwater corrodes too much of the nose and upper lip. Under the Xiling Tomb, the wind and rain, The Yellow Spring is brewing an unprecedented coup, and the hibiscus is like a face. Covering the earth, the black wind and black rain collapsed from the cracks of the broken dome, and fell on all sides, from all directions on the compass, fell down, fell down. Nuwa refining the stone to make up for the heavens, Nuwa sat on the colored stone and cried out in despair. Fragment of the Broken Line of the Book of Stones. Stone City is also flooded with the ghost rain of the Six Dynasties. Under the Lonely Stage, on the slope of The Horse Ridge, in front of the Yanggong Monument, how many tears of pedestrians fell. Also fell on Xiangshui. Also falling in Xiaoshui. Also fell on Su Xiao's West Lake, black wind and black rain extinguished the cold green candle, in Su Xiao's small stone tomb. Xiao Xiao's ghost rain began to fall from the time of Dayu. Rain fell on the dirt of China. Rain seeped under the strata of China. China's history is soaked with rain stains. It seems that from the Stone Age to the present, the same sensitive soul, in different bodies, endured endless desolation and shock. After crying over Manqing, Chuzhou Taishou also joined the ranks of Bai Bone. Weeping wet green shirts, Jiangzhou Sima also turned into bitter bamboo and yellow reeds. Even Prince Joe couldn't take away Li Bai and his wine bottle. How many earthworms floated in the rain tonight.
This is the edge of the letterhead. The blind night groped for blind wind and rain. Everything was dark, only the beard grew under the lips. Tomorrow morning, the green blade of my bayonet will enjoy a good breakfast. This light and fluttering international postal jane will also rush out of the thick rain clouds and fly eastward in the crisp blue of the peacock.
December 10, 1963
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