Stoneö酒的må(1983), for example, contains a forty-two-page elegy
to the poet’s mother that is in fact a lament for China; Nirvana of Angels
天G的<=(1990) features a number of poems written after the poet
visited the mainland. His return left him feeling like a stranger. The
intervening years had distanced him from his homeland. In 1990, Luo
Fu also published the collection House of Moonlight月光>¦, which
contains a large number of occasional lyrics as well as longer, nostalgic
poems such as “Cricket’s Song” ?@oô (excerpted):
Someone living abroad once said: “Last night I heard a cricket
chirr and mistook it for the one I heard in the countryside of Sichuan.”
....
有lA:“在C外, i¼到?@?, 還_æ0ÞD鄉'¼到的$12.”
。 。 。 。
Tonight I’m not in Chengdu ÑÔ在成M
My snoring is not a longing for home F聲G成鄉愁
And the chirrup in my ears 耳\唧唧Ô
Weaves an unending song Ô如1首千JKL的ô
I can’t recall the year, the month, MÔ}$A$月$i
or the evening 在$ä%N, $ä鄉間
In what city or village $älO¼
Or in what small train station 唧唧P唧唧
I heard it 。 。 。 。
Chirrup, chirrup 唧唧
.... QR0$12在??
Chirrup, chirrup S東的$2其聲-.
Which cricket is it that really sings? ÞD的$2其聲1
The Cantonese one seems the loneliest 北ø的$2其聲聒U
The Sichuan one, the saddest V南的$2?W有1XY味
The Beijing one, the noisiest 最©---
The Hunan one, the spiciest 我³吵醒的
But º0P 犁^¦
When I wake $聲最Ú最_的
It’s the cricket in Sanli Lane that 唧唧
Sings the softest and most dearly
of them all
Chirrup, chirrup
(Luo 1990: 53–56)
The poem forms an intertextual allusion to a poem by Su Shi, the
Song dynasty poet. Interestingly, Luo Fu’s poem was one of three writ-
ten on the same theme using the same central image, along with Liu
Shahe ?æ(b. 1931) and Yu Guangzhong `光¢(b. 1928). It is
written from the perspective of a traveller listening to the night-time
chirping of a cricket, an exile’s longing for home.
The Poetic Odyssey of Luo Fu 79