The Ornamental Iron Mountain

On my desk I have a miniature ornamental mountain made of iron. I got it without spending a penny, but it means more to me than any other objects I have in my room.
It is an ornamental mountain because that is the way it serves my use. In itself it is just a crude lump of iron. It is none of your lucky talismans, in fact to say what it is will only evoke outrage, for it is a fragment of a bomb dropped by the Japanese when they attacked the Chinese City of Shanghai in 1932.
The thing happened three years ago now. Shortly after the Japanese troops withdrew, I went to Lida School in Jiangwan to inspect the damage, and lingered over that mournful scene for some hours. On the way back I picked this lump of iron. The ground roundabout Lida School was littered with lumps of iron, some big, some small. I was old they were bomb fragments. The one I picked up was a small one, measuring roughly six inches across, three inches high and two inches thick. Its weight was about a catty. One side retained the curve of the cylinder, and judging by the roundness of the curve, the diameter of the original cylinder must have been about a foot. I don't know how heavy a bomb that would have made it. The other side was the fragmented side, all jagged and uneven, some part of it like a cliff face, others like proud rocks, the edges as sharp as a knife.
Many houses in the Jiangwan distric were destroyed by bombs, and many people killed the same way. To mention only the Lida School grounds, more than half the school buildings were destroyed. Corpses could still be seen among the rubble when I was there. That small bomb fragment must have taken part in the murderous work: like the executioner's sword it carried the reek of blood. In terms of the reliability of evidence, this was indeed 'ironclad'.
All kinds of associations rose in my mind when I placed that ironclad evidence on my desk. Because of its angularity it would not rest stably, and every time I moved it round, its sharp edges left scratches. At first I thought of having a stand made for it, so that it could be displayed like an ornamental mountain, but then I felt that this evidence of painful history should not e mounted like an antique. It is true that many of the antiques that have come down to us bear witness to history, but once clothed in the garments of antiques they lose their historical sting, and are just played with as curios.
I fairly soon removed this crude lump of iron from my desk and put it away, only occasionally taking it out thereafter when I remembered it s existence. Recently we moved house, and when sorting things out one of my family threw it in the rubbish basket. It took me a lot of searching to discover it. I devoted a lot of thought to its long-term preservation. Suppose I were to put it out on my desk, it would not sit properly, and would scratch the surface. Suppose I were to put it away in a clothes chest, I would have to watch out for it rusting and spoiling the clothes, and it would not be easy to dig out. Eventually I concluded it would be better to have a frame made and set it on my desk as an ornament. So I got someone to go to the City Temple district and have one of the redwood shops make a frame for me.
Now this lump of iron rests on a little redwood base and sits on my desk as an ornament mountain. After three years it is covered with a coat of brownish rust, particularly thick in the depressions. The surfaces that are broken off cleanly are like the cliffs in Shen Shitian's Ming dynasty landscape paintings, the irregular surfaces are like the veining effect in Huang Zijiu's Yuan dynasty landscapes, while the peaks and valleys remind me of Ni Yunlin's contours. When visitors see this ornamental mountain for the first time, they all praise it for its resemblance to a painting, and ask me where I got it. My family also have come to respect it, and will not throw it in the rubbish basket again.
So after all that, this lump of iron has now found a place and a means of preservation, but unfortunately has at the same time taken on the garb of an antique. To minimize the antique aspect and emphasize the historical aspect, I intend to write some inscription on it, to make it something more than an ornamental mountain with a strong resemblance to a painting in people's eyes.
What kind of inscription should I write? A poem or an admonition in classical style? I do not wish to go in for frivolous wordplay on this grave relic of history: I would prefer to record a few facts in a plain and simple way. What should I use to write the words? Black ink would not show up on the iron. By rights blood should be used, but a practical alternative would be blood-colored red lacquer. Today is the 10th of January; in another eighteen days it will be the anniversary of the Japanese attack. I will write the words on that day.