The poems in Luo Fu’s first book, River of the Soul靈 (1957),
are unexceptional and typical of the sort of poetry written then. The
lyrics in the collection tend to deal with dichotomies: freedom versus
imprisonment, real world experience versus an imaginary paradise of
love. “Chimney” is a good example:
Standing alone under a pale setting sun
Black hair lifted by the wind,
but a slender shadow stands still
It is a little cool below the
city wall, a little lonely
I am a chimney longing to fly
Head lowered, I gaze at the
long moat
The water brimming, meandering
for thousands of years
Who has had me imprisoned?
Every afternoon I gaze up
At the white clouds’ footprints
in the sky
I yearn to travel afar; Oh! that
long river, those blue mountains
If I could be a wild crane
chasing the clouds
Or even a fine speck of dust
But I’m just a shadow cast
below the city wall
--yielding loneliness to others
(Luo 1957: 40–41)
The fixed and immobile chimney stands in stark contrast to its lively
surroundings, the flowing water and the drifting clouds. The chimney
is powerless to break free from its physical imprisonment; it longs to
have the freedom of motion possessed by the wild crane, or even the
passive freedom of a speck of dust blown about on the wind. In addi-
tion to the freedom inherent in nature, from which the chimney, as a
manmade object, is barred, there exists a second kind of freedom: spir-
itual or existential freedom. Although the chimney lacks the freedom
of physical mobility, it possesses freedom of thought and imagination;
the chimney can imagine its own freedom. Yet the consciousness of the
chimney remains imprisoned in its material form.
Paradoxically, in the last stanza, the chimney is apparently freed
from its imprisoning form: it has shifted from the solid form to the
66 John Balcom
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