Emi Siao (萧三)
1896 - 1983

Comments by the translator: I believe this poem can be regarded as a sonnet consisting of 4 + 6 + 4 lines. The first four lines is an introduction, the middle six lines speak of the father and his words, and the final four lines reconnect to the first four lines with a rather unexpected and almost brutal ending. Since English is not my mother tongue, the English translation is rather plain and simple, without rhymes or rhythm. I have aimed to keep the wording for each line as close to the Chinese text as possible, but some verb forms may be open for other interpretations. The original text does not tell if the son and father are alone up on the wall, if there is one or many poplars standing on the riverside, if one or many songs will be sung...

The Swedish translation of the poem contains the same pattern of rhymes as the original (a, a, b, b - c, d, c, d, e, e - f, g, g, f) and it also has been given a rhythm suitable for a sonnet.

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I have also translated a few more poems into Swedish. See the Swedish version of this page!

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Further reading:

• Biographic information (Chinese)
• Short biographic information (Chinese)
• A letter from Mao Zedong, dated 1945-02-22 (Chinese)
• Memorial speech (Chinese)
• Anti Japanese resistance in a Chinese poem, a poem from 1942 (Italian)

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