Student Blood in Beijing Square

 
Our corner of the world
is a garden lantern glowing.
When lilies sway on soft light
the paintings and poems of your ancients speak
 
Today, hearing soldiers shot you  [i]
I would have left the flowers
on those streets
till someone said
“It was time to halt them.”
 
then came a long discussion: 
“Moderation has no friends,
it can’t appeal to passions.”
History says mobs are dangerous.
If so, those shots make sense,
though not to many…
 
since I believe in sacrifice
and first-fruit offering,
which is youth.
But logic says  –  Christ died alone,
it was the Crowd that killed him
 So, now, my heart leans toward you.
 
Well … your blood ran today
and I, like your long ago sages,
have no role but to invite your spirit
–  would it had been your youthful selves  --
into my garden.
 
Sit by my lantern
paint me a picture
read me a poem
listen to reason.
 
 
(1980s  –  I had no affection then for the Beijing dictatorship. But the student action, grown violent, was no longer intellectual dissent. A government who tolerates such action likely invites further trouble and so abdicates its rule. The bloodshed on the square, in that sense, was at least defensible.
The cruelties and persecutions afterward were needless, thus indefensible, and to me the most appalling terror of the whole event. The poem was composed before that retaliation became known.)


[i]   “1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre”.  Wikipedia.org.  {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre}  (accessed January26, 2022).