Chinese poet Zhu Yufu was sentenced to a seven-year prison term for writing a poem titled "It's Time". Below is the text of the poem. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to reprint poem here.
IT’S TIME
By Zhu Yufu, translated by A. E. Clark
It’s time, people of China! It’s time.
The Square belongs to everyone.
With your own two feet
It’s time to head to the Square and make your choice.
It’s time, people of China! It’s time.
A song belongs to everyone.
From your own throat
It’s time to voice the song in your heart.
It’s time, people of China! It’s time.
China belongs to everyone.
Of your own will
It’s time to choose what China shall be.
4 comments:
Thanks for drawing attention to this, Conrad. Here's hoping there's official U.S. pressure to undo this ridiculous sentence.
Joseph,
in the struggle between art and power, I think we know how the poets will fare...
From Tom Clark:
It's not always a struggle; clever poets know that kissing up to power butters the hand that doles out the bread.
Who's got the power? Same answer as would be given to "Who's got the money"?
That soi-disant helping-hand "Poetry Foundation", for instance, now, they've got the money... and we've heard that the ward-heelers there have applied plenty of pressure... to make sure they have the greatest office furniture in the world!
Three years ago this week I posted on the fate of Wei Wenhua, a Chinese blogger murdered by Cheng Guan.
See the bottom item here:
Dangerous: Blogging.
Plus ça change.
(As the U.S. is currently to all effects and purposes owned by China, "official pressure", in this regard, anyway, could only signify more internalized stress, pseudo-diplomatic hypertension and ineffectual rhetorical flailing.)
Look for freedoms to be eroded here long before any real "pressure" is exerted to institute or restore same elsewhere!
Best as ever,
Tom
Tom,
thank you for response and link to "Vanitas" blog.
"Look for freedoms to be eroded here..."such as recent gov't proposals (in States and Canada) to look randomly into Internet servers, shut down any sites gov't thinks is infringing copyright, intellectual property rights, etc
How right you are!
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