THE DESERTED VILLAGE

By: I-to Wen
August 10, 2026

A series dedicated to poems, published c. 1900–1935, the Radium Age sf-adjacent themes of which include: dystopia and utopia, far-out mathematics and the fourth dimension, Afro-futurism, catastrophe, future war, new technologies, scientific breakthrough, dehumanization, cosmic awe, disenchantment and unseen forces, unknowable aliens and singularity. Research and selection by Joshua Glenn; thematic index here.

Tanguy’s “Extinction of Useless Lights” (1927)

Where did they go? How has it come to
     pass?
On stoves squat frogs, in ladles lilies bloom;
Tables and chairs float in fields and water
     ponds;
Rope-bridges of spiderwebs span room on
     room.
Coffins are wedged in doorways, rocks
     block windows:
A sight of strange gloom that rends my
     heart.
Scythes lie rusting away in dust,
Fishing nets, abandoned, rot in ash-piles.
Heavens, even such a village cannot retain
     them,
Where roses forever smile, and lily leaves
     grow as big as umbrellas;
Where rice sprouts are so slender, the lake
     so green,
The sky so blue, and the birds’ songs so like
     dew-pearls.
Who made the sprouts green and the
     flowers red?
Whose sweat and blood is it that is blended
     in the soil?
Those who have gone left so resolutely,
     unhesitatingly.
What was their grievance, their secret
     wish?
Now, somebody must tell them: “Here the
     hogs
Roam the streets, ducks waddle among the
     pigs,
Roosters trample on the peony, and cows
     browse on vegetable patches.”
Tell them: “The sun is down, yet the cattle
     are still on the hills.
Their black silhouettes pause on the ridge,
     waiting,
While the mountains around, like dragons
     and tigers,
Close in on them. They glance about and
     shiver.
Bowing their heads, too frightened to look
     again.”
This, too, you must tell them: “These beasts
     recall days of old
When evening chill approached and
     poplars trembled in the wind,
They only needed to call once from the
     hilltop.
Though the trails were steep, their masters
     would help them,
And accompanying them home there
     would be the scent of hay.
As they think thus, their tears fall.
And they huddle together, jowl against
     jowl….”
Go, tell their masters, tell them.
Tell them everything, do not hide anything.
Ask them to return! Ask them to return!
Ask them why they do not care for their
     own cattle.
Don’t they know that these beasts are like
     children?
Poor creatures, so pitiful, so frightened.
Hey, where are you, messenger?
Hurry now, tell them — tell Old Wang the
     Third,
Tell the Eldest Chou and all his eight
     brothers,
Tell all the farm hands living around the
     Lin-huai Gate,
Tell also that red-faced blacksmith Old Li,
Tell Old Woman Huang and all the village
     women,
Tell them all these things, one by one.
Tell them to come back, come back!
My heart is torn by this sight of gloom.
Heavens, such a village cannot retain these
     people,
Such a paradise on earth without a man!

— Wen Yiduo (闻一多, also referred to as I-to Wen) wrote “The Deserted Village” in February 1927. The context was the devastating toll of the Chinese civil wars and militarism during the Republican period. While working in Wuhan as an arts division head for the National Revolutionary Army’s political department, he witnesses ruined landscapes and displaced peasant populations.

Not really a proto-sf poem, to be fair. But post-apocalyptic, eerie.

Found in translation in Twentieth Century Chinese poetry: An Anthology (1963), by Kai-yu Hsu (translator and editor).

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THE DESERTED VILLAGE

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