{"id":383549,"date":"2023-01-18T06:06:23","date_gmt":"2023-01-17T20:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=383549"},"modified":"2023-01-18T06:06:23","modified_gmt":"2023-01-17T20:06:23","slug":"a-9th-century-chinese-poem-for-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/a-9th-century-chinese-poem-for-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"A 9th\u00a0century Chinese poem for Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

I found a Tang Dynasty poem by Zhang Ji (c.776 \u2013 c. 829) that seems to reach across 1,200 years to soldier\u2019s wives in Ukraine today.
\nGiven the continued bombing of civilian targets in Ukraine by Russia this past holiday season, the war refugees weigh heavy on my mind. Before Thanksgiving 2022, there were more than 1 million Ukrainian women and\u00a0children refugees in Poland alone. Millions more were spread out in other European countries. Putin said there would be no cessation of bombing during the Christmas holidays and he kept his word. Some on Christmas eve and on Dec. 27, 2022, Russia dropped 33 bombs on a Ukraine city in the Donbas region, including on a maternity hospital. On Jan. 14, 2023, they bombed an apartment building, leaving 60 dead, including one child. Primary targets have been civilian buildings, including power, heat and water plants. Basically, Putin is committing aerial genocide, bombing infrastructure and increasing the number of deaths\u00a0due to exposure during the dead of winter.
\nMillions of grandmothers, mothers, sisters, aunties, girls, boys, and infants will never see some of the males in their lives again. This is also true for the Russians, many whom have no desire to be there in the first place. There are also women fighting on the front lines on both sides, so those female soldiers who are killed will never be seen alive by their respective male family members.
\nThe horrors of war continue for those refugees alive after the war ceases. Millions will have no homes to return to, schools and hospitals have been destroyed all over Ukraine.\u00a0
\nThe United States has monuments to the Unknown Soldier and \u201cmissing-in-action\u201d flags still fly here\u00a0in the CNMI. Thank you to President Biden for helping Ukraine. The sentiment and reality of this anti-war poem extend across the centuries and around the\u00a0world today. Here is the poem, \u201cA Soldier\u2019s Wife Complains\u201d in its entirety:
\n\u00a0
\nA Soldier\u2019s Wife Complains*<\/strong>
\n\u00a0
\nIn September the barbarians killed the border general
\nand all our Han soldiers died by the Liao River.
\nNo one can travel three thousand miles to pick up white bones,
\nso the families tried to summon the lost souls and bury them.
\nWomen depend on their sons and husbands,
\nhappy to live together, even in poverty,
\nbut my husband is dead in a field and my son\u2019s in my belly
\nand though my body remains, my life is a candle in daylight.<\/p>\n

*Since they didn\u2019t have the bodies, the families buried the dead soldier\u2019s clothes and summoned their souls to lie at rest.<\/em><\/p>\n

By JOEY \u2018PEPE BATBON\u2019 CONNOLLY (Special to the Saipan Tribune)<\/strong>
\nJoey aka Pepe Batbon is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is a sonnet practitioner who enjoys stargazing.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found a Tang Dynasty poem by Zhang Ji (c.776 \u2013 c. 829) that seems…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":355846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[26,23673,13843,772],"class_list":["post-383549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-cnmi","tag-nola","tag-pepe-batbon","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}