Lessons of Change – X.

GOU - Hexagram 44: One powerful Yin encounters or comes to meet the Yang in the Sixth month of the Gregorian Calendar, on the Sixth of June onwards – having associated with five (meaning any number) of them. The symbol of Sun, the eldest daughter, under Qian, the father; Sun, the wind, raging under Qian, the sky. the soft underside of the solid strong edifice: one broken line under five unbroken ones, a veritable open and free orifice that topples and breaches the closed Yang fortress.

When the encounter takes place on the sixth of the sixth month in the century’s sixty-sixth year, for instance, of the last century, then anything may be possible: a whole people’s mores suffer, and general decline sets in through slow rot.

According to Richard Lynn and Richard Wilhelm’s translations: It would not do to marry such a woman. It must be brought swiftly under control by tying it to metal brakes, the Fourth Yang. The Yijing’s commentators: Confucius, Wang Bi - take the broken line to signify “woman” as Yin in their male-oriented society. Here, “Yin” may be of either sex, though the “sow”, the “lean pig” rests the book’s cherished image. One such lesson – among many – then would be:

Beware beware of the Sixth of June
When everything begins to go out of tune
Though it be but the fifth month of the moon
On which the Yijing decides Yang’s semesterly swoon

The dark abusive days diminish at the winter solstice
Fresh buds push inexorably under the icy parapet
Once again the earth awakens to right itself
After the skies close their eyes
To take a short nap
During the months of leisure
When work slows down
When Qian withdraws in August
Wrong-doers wreak havoc
Under the guise of hard-earned reprieve

Days lengthen to expose the Yin’s covert covetous doings
Under cover of six long rollicking months of shenanigans

In June the lean pitiable sow
Begins her enticing solo
The boars close-eyed ignore
And gore

This’s the day on the wretched creature
sidles up
Both pity and compassion
nourish her
The poor shivering thing
Fatherless misunderstood
Victim of strict meanness
Faking blind discrimination
Unjustly broken forsaken
The oddly fascinating Yin
Willing to be folded within
Protective wings

Till October comes around with its bounty
The granary stuffed to the full
Lush fruits still pulpy and juicy
Ripen to a filthy rashes on skin fullness
The greenness of innocence
Turned to an over-ageing dun-yellow
Tell-tale sickening silliness

Soon detached the firm leaves will lie
Thick on the ground spurned and trampled
Earlier than the appointed hour

No matter
Recourse to pins and stitches
Breast uplifts
Straightened noses
Dead Indian women’s chevelures
High straining buttressing stilts and heels
And thick sticky chemical tasting paint
Squeezed carcasses concentrated musk
Furs of bludgeoned seals and foxes
Haute couture paid through bankers’ loots
Or the easy secret service paid tryst
Through hard-earned tax payers’ sweat
In five-star deluxe hotels
Will lengthen the hour
Yet
In the boudoir

Yes
Pity the woman
She has but a score years
From teen to thirty-five
Before men take her
For a whore

Some women know this well
And cleverly work to use this sell

She’ll kick and thrust her lolly chops
From bum to cheek
In the later Heaven’s southwest sky
Fascination oozing from her loins
The sacred doors of propagation

Bruised all over under fire-dragon skies
Bloody a limb or two out of joint
And the gnawing ignominy
Of having relented in June

Sowing your wild oats
With the blessings of millions of years
The trained and disciplined chromosomes

Without the company on whom to work her wiles
And sap nourishing energy to continue
She’ll seek the riotousness of her ilk
And at autumn’s summit
At the height of smoldering flesh
When worms and germs
Will make a merry feast
Of the beast in her meat

Let her fade away with her booty
Seek not to set right wrongs

You have only yourself to blame
For thinking easily entered gamboling
Will not be made out to be your aim
For weren’t you then the spirit consoling