Translated by Henry Zhang and Amelia Dale
People always bring up my birthplace,

a cold Yunannese place with camellias and pines.

It taught me Tibetan, and I forgot.

It taught me a tenor; I haven’t sung

That register is a hard pine nut, hidden somewhere.

There are Muntjacs in the summer

and fire pits in winter.

The locals hunt, harvest honey, plant buckwheat

because it’s hardy. Pyres are familiar:

we don’t ask about the private life of death

or ask comets striking ruts in the earth.
They taught me certain arts

so that I might never use them.

I left them

so they wouldn’t leave me first.

They said that loving should be like fire

so that ashes needn’t need to burst into life.