五月

Meaning

Zang Kejia's short lyric celebrates the wheat harvest of the fifth month. Four parallel clauses - 'May is the month of wheat, ... of the rolling balls ... of gold ... of red-tasselled spears' - pile up the signs of the season, and a closing couplet adds the glare of the sun and the rolling of the wheat waves. Underlying all of it is a labourer's eye: the month is valued not for its beauty but for what it yields, and the poem honours the farmers who bring the crop in.

五月是小麦的五月，是打麦场上滚珠的五月，是黄金铺地的五月，是红缨枪竖立的五月。太阳把大地烤得滚烫，麦浪在田野里翻滚……

Appreciation

【Plain Paraphrase】Zang Kejia opens with a series of declarations: May is the month of wheat, the month of the rolling balls on the threshing floor, the month when gold lies spread over the land, the month when red-tasselled spears stand upright. A productive couplet follows, and the poem ends with the sun baking the earth scorching and waves of wheat tumbling in the fields. 【Structure】The poem is built on anaphora - four parallel 'May is the ... May' clauses in a row - so the line broadens rather than develops; the climax therefore falls on the final image, not on the final clause. 【Imagery】The threshing-floor ball, the gold, the spears and the wheat waves are all harvest objects seen from a peasant's vantage. 'Scorching' and 'rolling' convert the season's heat and motion into physical sensation. In short: bright, clean and unsentimental - a rural lyric that trusts plain things to carry feeling.

【白话串讲】 臧克家写《五月》：“五月是小麦的五月，是打麦场上滚珠的五月，是黄金铺地的五月”——“太阳把大地烤得滚烫，麦浪在田野里翻滚”——他写五月的麦收。 【意象与手法】 “五月是小麦的五月，是打麦场上滚珠的五月，是黄金铺地的五月”以排比与反复铺写麦收；“太阳把大地烤得滚烫，麦浪在田野里翻滚”以滚烫翻滚写丰收。语言明快、节奏鲜明。 【情感与主旨】 写五月的麦收景象，以劳动者视角赞颂丰收与土地，是臧克家“泥土诗人”关注农村劳动生活的代表作，明快清新中见其对农民的真挚情感。 【名句点睛】 常考“五月是小麦的五月，是打麦场上滚珠的五月，是黄金铺地的五月”以排比写麦收；“太阳把大地烤得滚烫，麦浪在田野里翻滚”以麦浪翻滚写丰收。

Allusions

The poem's governing figure is not drawn from the classical storehouse but from rural labour. Gold spread across the ground recalls the long association of a harvested field with wealth; the red-tasselled spear evokes both a weapon and the cornstalk. The threshing-floor ball is the roller used to beat grain from the stalk - an image of work rather than of literature, and deliberately so. Where classical verse would have alluded to the Book of Songs, Zang prefers the implement at hand; the allusion, such as it is, belongs to the shared language of the harvest rather than to any earlier text.

诗中「五月是小麦的五月是打麦场上滚珠的五月」「是黄金铺地的五月是红缨枪竖立的五月」「太阳把大地烤得滚烫麦浪在田野里翻滚」等语，皆含典故故实。「五月是小麦的五月是打麦场上滚珠的五月」写五月是小麦的五月是打麦场上滚珠的五月；「是黄金铺地的五月是红缨枪竖立的五月」写是黄金铺地的五月是红缨枪竖立的五月；「太阳把大地烤得滚烫麦浪在田野里翻滚」写太阳把大地烤得滚烫麦浪在田野里翻滚。诗人以小麦、麦浪等语入诗，不着痕迹，而把写景田园之情写得真切可感，是善于熔铸典故的体现。此等用典之法，熔铸古今而不着痕迹，既不炫博以示学，亦不拘泥于旧解，正见诗人学养之深与运思之巧。读者于此等处尤当细心玩味，方能领会其言外之旨与味外之味。此等用典之法，熔铸古今而不着痕迹，既不炫博以示学，亦不拘泥于旧解，正见诗人学养之深与运思之巧。读者于此等处尤当细心玩味，方能领会其言外之旨与味外之味。

Commentary

Critics have long prized this lyric among Zang Kejia's best short poems for exactly this plainness. It was widely anthologised in the 1950s and reprinted in his collected verse, and its bright, fresh tone was taken as a model of how modern poetry might describe rural labour without losing simplicity. Later readers have noted that the four parallel clauses are not merely decorative: each names a different stage or facet of the harvest, so the accumulation quietly builds a portrait of a season. The last line, with its unbounded rolling, is often quoted as the poem's true conclusion.

这首《五月》，是臧克家写写景田园之作，写五月是小麦的五月、是打麦场上滚珠的五月、是黄金铺地的五月、太阳把大地烤得滚烫之情，明快清新。起「五月是小麦的五月，是打麦场上滚珠的五月」——五月是小麦的五月，是打麦场上滚珠的五月。写五月是小麦的五月：五月是小麦的五月、是打麦场上滚珠的五月——小麦的五月、打麦场上滚珠；「是黄金铺地的五月，是红缨枪竖立的五月」——是黄金铺地的五月，是红缨枪竖立的五月。写是黄金铺地的五月：是黄金铺地的五月、是红缨枪竖立的五月——黄金铺地、红缨枪竖立；结「太阳把大地烤得滚烫，麦浪在田野里翻滚」——太阳把大地烤得滚烫，麦浪在田野里翻滚。写麦浪在田野里翻滚：太阳把大地烤得滚烫、麦浪在田野里翻滚——烤得滚烫、田野里翻滚。这「太阳把大地烤得滚烫，麦浪在田野里翻滚」，是全诗之结：以麦浪在田野里翻滚写其田园。全诗明快清新，以景写情，正是臧克家诗中的名篇。

Prosody

Line by line

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