Rhythm and rhyme of love everlasting

What is enduring love like?

Seventeen years after well-known poet Ai Qing passed away, his wife of more than 40 years says she still misses the man, ever more intensely.

To remember him, the spry 80-year-old Gao Ying has put together her poems and those of her husband in a book of selected works.

Locking Hands in Poem was published recently by the Writers Publishing House.

A newly published Locking Hands in Poem is a testimony of the enduring love between Gao Ying and her late husband Ai Qing. Photos provided to China Daily

A newly published Locking Hands in Poem is a testimony of the enduring love between Gao Ying and her late husband Ai Qing. Photos provided to China Daily

"I miss him more as each day passes," Gao says. "My love for him has only become stronger over the years."

In her selection of poems that spanned more than 30 years, Gao has written about love ("it's sacrifice, it's bliss"), longing ("you should see me, still missing you deeply") and a yearning for a dream where her beloved would appear again.

Ai Qing, originally named Jiang Zhenghan, was a poet of household fame. His most renowned works, Dayanhe - My Wet Nurse, Snowfall on the Chinese Earth and Ode to Light, were regarded as the finest modern Chinese poems.

His love affair with Gao was equally famous. Ai Qing was more than 20 years her senior when they met in the mid-1950s. She was then (unhappily) married and he was recovering from divorce.

"I sensed a pair of eyes on me while I was exercising," Gao wrote about their first encounter in her memoir Me and Ai Qing in 2003. As she remembered, Ai Qing had confessed to her not long after that "the minute I saw you, I knew I was in love".

They were married. But in the turbulent years afterwards, Gao had to follow the poet to the country's very far north and extreme west. She stood by him in the times during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) when his fame was tainted and he was in doubt of himself.

"I have never wavered in my love for him. The poems I write are under his influences," Gao recalls.

Literary critic Feng Lisan says: "To be together in life and in death, not give in to obstacles, the love between the two made the poems so alive and soulful."

"It's her poems for Ai Qing that are the most moving. The most resonating element of all Gao's poems is love," Zhang Guowo, poet and head of the Poetry Institute of China, comments.

Gao writes succinct, tender pieces, unlike the more grandiose style of her husband. Besides her personal feelings, she also writes to encourage children in earthquakes and soothe the poor souls during war.

And her most popular poem, The Vine, is evidently a testimony of love. The vine is a passionate lover, whoever it falls for, it will cling and never part.