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北美枫文集
mahuairong
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???Qingdao China
?????39?
?????2008-07-19
???teacher ???writing and boxing
????? 查找mahuairong发表的所有帖子 ???You see me, you lose me |
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| 西方文学 Western Literature |
 
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 HAPPY WE ARE BOTH
By Ma Huairong
Thirty is not a fear.
Trades are awaiting you around the corner.
But forty is indeed a horror.
Older, weaker, and sicker,
make making a living even tougher.
Hi, the unemployed,
Your food and drink who donate?
I pity you not because glories always go
with the failed, the wretched and the conquered.
But you have a family to support.
You have your olds to look after.
Sometimes you become instantly rich
By peeping into your mother’s purse,
her pensions turns to your good fortune.
You also covet your father’s property,
numbering his days on your pillow at night.
How naïve and lovely you are.
Yet you are no more five years of age.
Your son shows off in class
his grandpa’s belt from a Japanese marshal.
Your wife boasts her noble birthplace
whose neighbors are exotic buildings and beach
whose vanity and pride support her sense of happiness.
Hi, the unemployed,
The phrase class struggle has been dismissed completely
from the Chinese Sociology Dictionary.
If you are not blind or try not to be one,
You must recognize it from the bloody facts
Classes and differences do exist.
Take myself for instance,
I am teaching in a not bad university.
The economy there goes in a complete mess.
The colleges have an enormous sum of loan,
with the staff’s blood and sweat to stuff the holes.
In my trade I am teaching most and best in class.
But I am pushed into the lower caste.
According to the Theory out of date,
Owing to the social conditions of the same status,
we should have been but in actual fact
we are no longer made or recognize ourselves
as brothers and sisters in the same class.
Your laziness and slowness make me sad.
I dislike those who love ease and hate work.
I am sorry for your husband’s complaints.
You boast the joint venture is really better.
But why you are dismissed from its company?
I am tired of your wife’s glib tong and glad eyes.
You curse the state ownership.
Does it account for your stealing socks every night shift?
Time and tide wait for no man.
As a matter of fact,
You have enjoyed much more in daily life.
You live on relief fund at the same time a stockholder.
You grow up by the seashore of Tsingtao.
You are so deeply influenced by its pride and prejudice.
Why you know not how to go with the tide?
How to grow on the increase with the tide?
Thirty five years ago,
When I, as a serf, worked in the People’s Commune,
I began teaching myself English.
I had neither a teacher nor a grammar book.
I had only a radio to listen to the broadcast.
Very often when the program came,
the work was not over and harsh was the team leader.
Anxious, I had to go on toiling in the fields.
I had Monday and Tuesday or some day
written on the back of my left arm and hand
with ball pen not with ink pen
for fear that they were washed away by sweats.
Hi, the unemployed.
What were you doing then?
You were swimming like a frog.
You were playing table tennis.
You were dancing like a ball.
You were howling like an owl.
You were peeling sunflower seeds
teasing, joking, smiling and laughing
face to face,
arm in arm,
hand in hand with your girl friends.
Sun rises and sun sets.
Moon comes and moon goes.
You are not what you were.
I am no more what I was.
We were brought up in the years of Big Famine.
Now you look as if you are my uncle
or my elderly elder brother.
Apparently you’ve made an overdraft of your energy
in worry, in quarrel, in insomnia and in relations.
While on the life road of setbacks and hard struggle,
Through a persistent morning reading of English,
Through a sincere study and careful meditations,
Through arduous writing and climbing,
step by step, bit by bit,
I have made steady and striking progress.
Now it is a sullen, sultry and stuffy night.
The beings are equal in having a moment’s peace.
The dogs leisurely lead their masters for a stroll.
The cats walk the sidewalk with resentful eyes.
I am lying nakedly on my mattress after bath,
meditating upon cat, bat, energy or philosophy.
You are enjoying the cool under my balcony.
By roadside there is usually more freedom of speech
along with roast, toast, boast and talking of ghost.
How nice outdoors is the beer with beef and bean to eat.
How nice indoors are the sweet silent thoughts to cheat.
How nice a night life we are sharing in common!
How fine an age and era we have been in both!
How enjoyable a time we have both!
How happy we are both!
To drink shows you are a man.
To listen to you howl indicates we are human.
2008-08-17 01:00:01 |
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