Hair done up beautifully,
Eyebrows freshly penciled,
Yet how many time after making up my face
Have you, my husband, kept silent, uttering not
A single word of encouragement: one day I
Will be buried alongside you: it is to you I give all my love:
Yet you look lightly upon spending our remaining days together: for me
The bitterness began last year:
I knew well your meaning, yet I never spoke of it: today
I am determined to say very little, but what I say will have
Deep meaning: I choose a story of the past to tell you:
People may say of a couple that they are so close
That they become one body:
Yet when death separates them, will there be justice for the survivor?
When her husband dies, a woman lives quietly by herself, a bamboo
Cut down by the wind, never to grow again: though dry and dead,
It’s rings of growth are still visible: when a man loses his wife,
For the moment he is sad: but he is like a willow at the door,
Which sprouts forth new leaves each spring: the wind breaks off
one branch, yet another grows in it’s place: I speak to you
in jest, hoping you will listen: you should have something
of the plight of women, and from now on
cease to look down upon them.
NOTE: This poem is written by BAI JUYI a Chinese poet. Can you guess the period it is written? To our surprise, it is more than 1000 years. The poet belongs to Tang Dynasty(618-907). Even today his poems speak to us with relevance. Two hundred poems of his collections have been translated by Rewi Alley.
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