Mao Tse-tung - poems - HUICHANG

HUICHANG

Summer 1934

Soon dawn will break in the east.
Do not say "You start too early";
Crossing these blue hills adds nothing to one's years,
The landscape here is beyond compare.
Straight from the walls of Huichang lofty peaks,
Range after range, extend to the eastern seas.
Our soldiers point southward to Kwangtung
Looming lusher and greener in the distance.

Mao Tse-tung - poems - Tapoti

Tapoti

Summer 1933

	Red, orange, yellow, green,
	blue, violet, indigo:
	Who is dancing with these
	rainbow colours in the sky?
	Air after rain, slanting sun:
	mountains and passes turning blue
	in each changing moment.
	Fierce battles that year:
	bullet holes in village walls.
	These mountains so decorated,
	look even more beautiful today. NOTES Tapoti is a town seventeen miles northwest of Juichin in Kiangsi Province, the main Red base. Tapoti is said to be a colourful place, with high mounds of red clay and green pine woods. Rice paddies and farmhouses with grey tile roofs and white walls add their colours. Willows line the streams. After rain, there are rainbows in the sky with as many colours as the landscape. ‘Fierce battles that year’ probably refers to the fighting in February 1929 in which the Red Army lost heavily but captured hundreds of Nationalist troops and rifles. The poem repeats one of Mao’s favourite situations  —  a landscape beautiful in itself, made more attractive by Red Army victory and the presence of Communist soldiers and flags, adding their own colours (including blood) to those of the town and country. —Transcriber, MIA

Mao Tse-tung - poems - "ENCIRCLEMENT" CAMPAIGN

AGAINST THE SECOND "ENCIRCLEMENT" CAMPAIGN

Summer 1931

The very clouds foam atop White Cloud Mountain,
At its base the roar of battle quickens.
Withered trees and rotten stumps join in the fray.
A forest of rifles presses,
As the Flying General descends from the skies.
In fifteen days we have marched seven hundred li
Crossing misty Kan waters and green Fukien hills,
Rolling back the enemy as we would a mat.
A voice is heard wailing;
His "Bastion at every step" avails him nought!