When Can We Celebrate Zhu Yufu?

by Richard Hartwell

Come the end of the Year of the Snake,
Enlightenment of the Buddha will be
celebrated with meals of fruits and mixed grains;
Zhu Yufu will work in the labor camp because
his poems proposed the enlightenment of China.

Beginning with the Chinese Year of the Horse,
the Spring Festival will celebrate the new
year with fireworks and happy family visits;
Zhu Yufu will work in the labor camp because
he is not allowed family visits or sparks of pleasure.

Then Blue Dragon Festival will be observed with
sweet pancakes and the ritual of cleaning house;
after eating his meager meal, straightening his cell,
Zhu Yufu will work in the labor camp because
bureaucratic dragons deemed him guilty of incitement.

Chinese Women’s Day is calendared next,
honoring the servile nature of an older gender
being replaced by the new, encouraging equality;
Zhu Yufu will work in the labor camp because,
no longer equal to any, he is politically emasculated.

The Festival of Tomb Sweeping zealously praises
ancestors with picnic visits to graves, an atmosphere
of family, and extravagant offerings of food and drink;
Zhu Yufu will work in the labor camp because
his only rest may come with a grave in the future.

Dragon Boat Festival, in honor of the revered poet
Qu Yuan, is celebrated with a meal of boiled dumplings,
and praises are raised to a poet of political acceptance;
Zhu Yufu will work in the labor camp because
his poetry voyaged in a sea and climate of repression.

The Night of Sevens, Magpie Festival recalls the
separation of mixed-star lovers, forbidden to meet
but once a year, kinder than Shakespeare’s lovers;
Zhu Yufu will work in the labor camp because
there is no place left for love as a prisoner of hate.

Finally, the Festival of Winter Solstice, with family
gatherings and veneration of ancestors, will end the
Year of the Horse for another twelve-year cycle;
Zhu Yufu will work in the labor camp because
his seven-year sentence to hard labor is not yet served.

Seven years is insufficient to still the song of
this angry poet, for the government is only scared,
not hard of hearing, and when we learn of his death,
Zhu Yufu will be free from toil in Zhejiang Prison No. 4
and the people will create a Festival of the Dragon Poet.

So, poet-prisoner Zhu Yufu, you are not forgotten!