旭容 / Xurong Poem by Zheng Xiaoqiong

Out of its futility life breads countless illusions
Even in the face of death and gloomy failures
I'm full of resplendent respect for life
It's life that allows me to witness the strangest scenes on earth
I read the fate of these women or mine
Our bodies and souls eaten hollow by industry we
have lost ourselves too soon being dissolved by reality
only illness broken fingers wounds retain remnants of our era's memories
As I write down these lines your pale face
reveals your frailty dizziness palpitations your breathing
labored You've gradually got used to what the industrial age brings
diseases pains glues benzene … entangled in the veins
Bodily pains are not as frightening as the sickness of society
Countless people who share your fate don't know
the root cause of their illnesses They leave others' cities to return to their villages
suffering ailments dying in silence becoming part of the voiceless
Industry is still displaying its own vain landscape in its own way
society still intoxicated with inexplicable prosperity You drag
your ailing body from the factory to the Occupational Disease Appraisal Center
to the Environmental Protection Center to the Department of Labor You endure
both social and bodily illnesses Tablets of medicine
flowing in your blood strangle the throat of your sickness for the time being
Social malady continues to rot from one canker
to another making you see more clearly
the truths of life True these outrageous
ailments are too real to speak of but you must
find their root cause I see in your lonely gaze
the glint of honest There's too much pain we mustn't continue to
endure its infliction blindly "So many people died without their occupational
illnesses appraised"
It's more difficult than "the arduous paths to Shu"1 We are both from Shu,
experiencing the tortuous
cliffhangers of our fate from "off the docket" to "thoracotomy for lung
examination"2
I am filled with uncontrollable pain and rage….