For Them
I was lucky enough to meet them once
though we belong to different times.
I thank you, life!
It was they who taught me
that my own traditions are not
all broken yet.
When changes
become fixed in writing, when it seems
that things are the only things that will remain,
who can bear witness then
to all that was in the past?
It was you, mother
who took me to see them
when I was a child:
your elders, who even when they were still alive
had already passed into legend.
Some sat in silence
like black stones.
Some spoke in torrents
like roaring beasts of the canyon.
Some tiny details I still remember:
how though some of them wore
magnificent regalia
they had wide, bare feet.
About the translators
Austin Woerner is a Creative Fellow in Chinese-English literary translation at the University of Leeds.
Margaret Yuanyuan Xu is a lecturer at Xihua University in Chengdu. She was a visiting scholar at University of Leeds in 2024.