Where Is the Faraway Place

On every morning in the faraway place,

the warm sun at high latitude reflects upon the earth.

The ancestors from afar are not in a magical space,

not in a distant past,

but in the fields where you and I have lived for generations.

The ancestors crossed Shanhai Pass and the Greater Khingan Range.

Some once rode across the grasslands.

Some once turned their faces toward the black soil.

Some once held the day’s catch in their hands.

Some once released hawks into the sky.

Some once hammered iron nails into shape.

Some once gazed into the distance from the summit of Changbai Mountain.

Some once walked before the deserts of Hinggan League.

People are base enough.

That is why they sink into alcohol and tobacco.

Atop buildings long since collapsed,

old music plays from worn-out speakers.

And we, following the beat,

begin a cheerful “dance.”

Some among us smoke cheap cigarettes,

watching the smoke drift away with the wind like a future beyond saving, until it disappears;

the patriots say we are already beyond redemption.

I stand alone in the bleak, snowy fields,

where endless sorghum fields are strewn with earthen mounds planted with flowers.

Scalding molten iron poured into our veins.

Choking exhaust gas drilled into our chests.

The northern wind made us lean tightly against one another.

The southward current made us gather closely at the center.

Snow covered the colors we once had.

Black rain washed away the brightness we once carried.

After winter passes,

this land belongs only to us.

Our land, our cities, our people, our iron, our blood.

In the north, in the wilderness of longing,

on the plain, beneath the mountain, beside the riverbank,

everything is lost in haze.

On streets that have been renamed,

in a distant childhood crushed underfoot,

fierce-faced dogs pass by my side.

Passersby all look at me with smiles.

At night, stars flicker and madmen wander.

Power lines and poles are moving.

Even the walls are biting.

If I wake, I will not give up on myself.

Beneath domes of glass and concrete,

people still go on living, still stand unfallen as they live.

Just as our fathers instructed us: do not covet what comes from outside, but guard your own home well.

Only the city remains, only the city stands unfallen,

embracing exposed rebar

and mottled factories.

Inside them lives

a crowd of lathes that manufacture loneliness.

I swallow an iron moon.

They call it a screw.

.

I swallow this industrial order.

Those youths beneath the plan die young.

I swallow rushing from place to place, swallow displacement,

swallow pedestrian overpasses, swallow a life grown over with rust.

.

Winter’s white garment is the beauty upon the ground.

Following the traces, something has died inside the body.

I can swallow no more.

All that I once swallowed now surges out from my throat,

spreading across the endless snow-covered fields of my hometown as

a deeply affectionate poem.