My Optimism - by Shao Yanxiang (1984)

I’m an adult

My optimism is adult too

My optimism

Doesn’t smile all the time

It has rolled in the mud

It’s been struck on an anvil

It burst out into sparks under the hammer

It burned in a bonfire that almost went out

For a while people scornfully called it dead ash

It has been worked over with nightsticks

Jerked around every which way

Then floated downriver chilled to the bone

None of its fibres

Is tainted by even a speck of dust

It doesn’t wear coveralls

Not my optimism

My optimism

Isn’t a coat

That you sometimes put on and then take off

Nor does it have a pocket with a conscience inside

That you could sometimes bring with you

Or sometimes leave at home

My optimism

Leaped into my arms

And I warmed it up with my body heat

After it had been trampled when those

Who had once embraced it cast it aside

I warmed it up

And it warmed me

Double-crossed

And reported on in secret

It grew up step by step

Yet without encountering obstacles

Without a taste of mean tricks

How could my optimism become adult?

Adult optimism

Isn’t always sweet

Sometimes its face is bathed in tears

I once heard it choking back sobs

But it woke out of its grief

Caught my hand

Comforted my heart

Propped my head in both hands

And tried gently to console me

With a tune that only parents would use with a child

Hello old friend inseparable as body and shadow

My long-suffering weather-beaten optimism

The poet and essayist Shao Yanxiang (b. 1933), an early supporter of the Chinese Communist revolution through his poetry, became in the mid-1950s sharply critical of party officials and bureaucrats who in turn denounced and harassed him.