THE
SIX-YEAR-OLD GIRL
I
The
six-year-old girl
drifted
lonely looking for food.
Her
dad had paid his “blood debt” –
a
“village bully” by the “Peasants’ Union” subdued.
Her
mom had left her behind helpless,
to
flee to the South, the Party to elude.
Since
she was just born,
fed
with mother’s milk, sleeping in cozy bed,
clothed
with flowered soft shirts,
she
had not noticed such happiness instead.
While
the movement was launched to its height,
who
would think of an unfortunate fate?
But,
between humans and humans
there
always is compassion to demonstrate.
Then,
there was an indigent old man
who
groped for crabs to live from day to day
that
happened to meet the puny kid
whose
parents had parted for far,
far-away.
He
suddenly felt pity for the orphan
and
shared with her his scant chow.
With
limbs scraggy like sticks,
belly
being bulgy, neck bent as to bow,
and
eyes round and red-rimmed,
she
diffidently stared at passers-by to slur:
“Give
me some gruel, madam!
A
little rice, please, sir!”
There
was a female cadre
while
mobilizing the hamlet’s mass to compete
unexpectedly
heard the lost cry;
she
looked towards the street
and
shuddered to remember
the
famine in the far-off year – who believes?
She,
just only five years old,
had
to lick the cake-wrapping leaves
in
the market, then ran to the alley
to
lead her younger brother home all right
and
snapped giving him a half,
the
handful of rice spared overnight.
The
poorest-peasant key activist
turned
her head, tears starting to her eyes:
–
“Although being a landlord’s child,
she
is too young to know what horrifies.
That
time I gave her a bowl of gruel;
I
was therefore put to the rack for three days.”
The
team’s leader then stepped back
to
contemplate the orphan in various ways,
trying
to look for any certain enemy‘s track,
but
found only a human, truly.
The
child having been fed
lay
down on the ground and slept fully.
She
dreamt, “Our babies in the future
should
be embraced and breast-fed duly.”
Her
assignment was to be dismissed
because
her acting so had been caught.
She
lit the dim lamp in the cold night
to
write her self-criticism report.
Because
of the boneless tongue
that
is not steel but it cuts as in an abattoir;
because
of the dim-sighted
that
cannot see horizons broad and far;
because
of the lazy brain
that
is all rusty like a corroded iron bar
for
long years sleeping soundly
on
the classic pages of hatred promoting art;
because
of the robotic bodies
full
of tendons but lacking a heart.
Well,
“Connected with reactionaries!”
“Off
one’s political standpoint guard!”
She
cried many nights continuously.
The
oil lamp was so hazy and hard.
She
asked herself and retorted:
“Why
have pity on a foe’s child though fair?
Were
I able to hate the kid
How
would I have been free from care!”