Goddess of Poetry
Copyright Oggbashan January 2021
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
This is just a short piece of fun.
I was treading the mixture for making bricks -- clay, straw and cow dung. My naked legs were covered in the foul mess to my knees. I stank. I knew I did but because I made bricks every day from dawn to dusk, I always did. Once or twice a year, after dark, I swam in the duck pond. That gave me a different smell for a few hours.
Suddenly there was a loud noise behind me. It was like thunder very close but a thousand times less violent. I suppose it might have been the sound of a pistol shot, except that I had never seen a pistol and never heard one.
I turned around, gasped, and prostrated myself on the ground. There, before me, floating a couple of feet above the mud, was a celestial being. I knew she was a celestial being not just because she was floating in the air but because she was very richly dressed in silk with golden threads. She had a shining aura and small winged creatures flying in circles around her.
"Get up to your knees, sweaty peasant," she said in exquisite tones. I had difficulty understanding her elegant form of speech. No one I had ever met had spoken Chinese so formally.
"What is your name, peasant?" she asked.
"I'm not sure, your magnificence," I replied. "I'm either Dee Gi or Gi Dee and neither is my father's name. My mother never knew my father..."
"She must have done to produce you, peasant."
"No. She was gang-raped by a group of students. She doesn't know which of them made her pregnant."
"So you are a bastard, peasant?"
"Yes, your magnificence, but I'm not a peasant. A peasant is far above me in status. I am just a slave. But who are you and why are you here?"
"Who am I? I am the Goddess of Classical Romantic Poetry."
"Poetry? I don't know any. I can't read or write and I have never heard any poetry." I replied. "I am sorry. You may be a goddess but I can't produce any poetry for you."
She laughed. It was a glorious sound.
"Dee? I will call you Dee. Every year students try to produce poetry in the examination halls. This year one million students will try to produce exquisite poems in classical form, and their subject this year is..."
She held up her left hand. It was smooth, pink, adorned with expensive rings and had slender fingers.
"...my left thumbnail. Why? I think the examiners have run out of ideas. The rules are that the students can never mention my lips, and certainly not any sexual parts of me. That makes their poetry very boring. A million poems on my thumbnail -- that is a million boring poems. The best will be written out by the court calligrapher for The Emperor to read. The Emperor will be bored, however good the poem is. I am so bored I could scream, and because I am the Goddess of Classical Poetry I have to try to inspire a million students to write something worthwhile when the rules and the subject mean they can't. It is torture for them and me."
