A *******’s son, born in the Five Grains Field
he first learned to crawl on the yellow earth
where mint and sorghum thrived side by side
then he learned to walk on ancient dikes
learned to run among wild southern geese
he learned to rein his granduncle's mule
(it leads him through those trackless fields)
But he always loved running on millet stalks
(when grass bends under his weight) and
through and through the mountains until
his feet scraped by uneven stones until
they bleed through the earth he stumps until
his mother lured him with supper's warmth:
—until life was siphoned by rattles and snarls
of brutish machines and a confusing tongue
and men chanting to the flags of the Rising Sun
"One question is all I ask, lusterless swain,
where do the men sleep when the sun sets?"
No words were spoken, and no more shall
when the bayonet pierced between his lips
—a soft tongue dropped with untethered flesh
When invaders aimed at his thatched hut
—where he first cried and searched for his father
where his grandfather died and his mother born—
he turned around and ran (no matter shelling
or the swooshing bullets- nor the callous fire!)
to find that old mule brayed for his master
they ran into the sorghums, the blue mist--
vanished in silence and mint's vinous scent
I never learned that child who loved running
was also me: in ten-thousand kinds of winds
that blew through the endless yellow earth
my great grandmother's mother loved a bandit
and gave him a place by her bedside hearth
Many years later a swain will roam the same fields
to see that unmarked grave, and blossoming sorghums.
I think there is an inherently surreal aspect to all family stories: they are the product of history, but often are buried away as time goes on. This one is inspired by that sense of surrealism, and inevitably the works of Mo Yan