Mauve waters and green mountains are nothing

When the great ancient doctor Hua Tuo

Could not defeat a tiny worm.

A thousand villages collapsed, were choked with weeds,

Men were lost arrows, ghosts sang

In the doorway of a few desolate houses.

Yet now in a day, we leap around the earth,

Or explore a thousand milky ways.

And if the cowherd who lives on a star

Asks about the God of plagues,

Tell him,, happy or sad, "The God is gone,

Washed away in the waters."

Mao wrote some poems, two poems actually, about getting rid of a disease that was a plague for the country. And it's called "Saying goodbye to the God of Disease." And the poem needs annotation. In that sense, it"s typical of classical Chinese poetry; he makes references to earlier emperors and places.