I Write My Poems Between the Land and the Sky

I write my poems between the land and the skybecause it’s only in the vast heavensthat I can write lines like theseActually, before this miracle is born, time’s shadowhas passed by us millions of timesWe’re Nature’s children, the snow leopard’s brothersWe’re the reincarnations of the antelope, honorable officials,the eternal emerald in the skyMaybe that’s another me, like a chiefwith jewels of stars sewn across my bronze foreheadI want to write, when I’m repeatedly returned to the earth’s wombI see my poems as gold and silver ribbonsThough they have no sound, they glisten with tearsForgive me, Bayanka mountain gods,today before dawn, I awoke in splendid clothesand didn’t participate in your ceremonies as I have in the past,but my song is becoming a paean to humankind’s fortune

I write my poems between the land and the skybecause the memory of sacred eagles is the only heightWhen light and darkness shift directions in the planet’s oceans,the eternal sun, the one who crowned you, also made you becomethe crownless king. Chief of all creation.Just as this dream becomes the base of all reality,countless souls have lit the fireweeds of beliefsplit open the black gorges, longing for one deep river after the next.No lives have purpose; we’ve been waiting all along.The stones we’re waiting for are still stones.The time we’ve been waiting for is still time, even after it’s been  verified by time.The conclusion we’ve waited foris actually the beginning before another ending.Our waiting is killing waiting.Reversing the meaning of vocabularies, letting silence cry out.Letting lives just born die today a thousand years ago.Our celebrations aren’t for that lonely part of the flesh.We’re celebrating that the messengers of light and warmthhave already arrived;they’ve already blown into the sacred bugle, like a one-horned beaststanding on the city wall protecting the mountains.

I write poems between the land and the skybecause my birth was a birth but my death isn’t a death,because I’ve returned from the distant future,I have no name. My name is the name of this plateau.I write my poems between the sky and the land.I shout out red ideals. I add more red to the colorred, because my hot tears overflowed long ago.I know those are heroes of humanity.Their heroic feats are unknown to the world.They were the ones who shattered an ancient myth,and before the fragments of the myth had stood up,they created a myth that belongs to the present.I can’t list their names, just as this singerhas forgotten his own name.They belong to a great collective. Their noble soulshave already entered the body of this land.I believe no poem can fully recount the exploits they undertook,but even so, I write this eulogy to praise them.