Mao adapts Du Fu's poem to scorn Lin Biao

 

(Above: the remains of Lin Biao's jet in the Mongolian desert.)

(“Translator’s” preface: Wang Zhaojun, or the Palace Maid Ming, was a beauty of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC to 8 AD). She was sent by the Emperor to marry the chieftain of the Xiongnu, a nomadic tribe whose lands incorporated present-day Mongolia, to establish peaceful relations between the Han and the Xiongnu.  On her way there she composed mournful tunes on her pipa, and a flock of geese flying overhead were so struck by the tragic scene and sound that they stopped flying and crashed to the ground. Many poets have written about her, and Mao was obviously familiar with the famous Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu’s efforts. The parallels with Lin Biao’s flight to the Soviet Union, and his plane crashing over Mongolia's Gobi Desert, were a gift to Mao, who only had to substitute Lin’s name for the Palace Maid’s to have a playfully contemptuous poem on Lin Biao’s demise. I am not really the translator – Du Fu’s poem was done by Wu Juntao and included in 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation, published in China in 1988.)

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A seven-character poem. A Playful Adaptation of Du Fu's 'Aria and Antiquities', Part III

(1971)

 

Mountains and valleys downwards to the Jingmen roll.

The village of Lin Biao is still there on the knoll.

When he left the Purple Palace, before him the deserts spread.

And now only an evergreen tomb crouches in the gloom ahead.

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七言诗。戏改杜甫《咏怀古迹》其三

（1971年）

 

群山万壑荆门，

生长林彪向有村。

一去紫台连朔漠，

独留青冢向黄昏。