Dry Bones by Huang Xiang
After millions of years,
Millions of years beneath layers of earth
Maybe someone will
Dig up my
Skeleton
At that time
He might imagine
A remote geological age
A history far off and indistinct
Are these the decayed bones of his own first ancestor?
Or the fossil of an ancient skeleton?
At that time,
He might imagine that
This very pile of dry bones
Once made their sound in the world
Loved
Hated
Mourned
Cried Out
Agitated
He might imagine
That this pile of dry bones
Once had a face contorted with bitterness
Once had eyes that cursed in silence
Once endured silently with bloodless lips tight-closed
Once wrote poems as etrnal as the moon and stars
These are the bones of a poet
These are the bones of one who while hoping, lost hope and despaired
These are the bones of one who fought furiously
These are the bones who one who walked this world, struggled and was
tempered
These are the dry bones of a man whose skeleton was scattered
and put together again
These are jawbones with teeth that gnashed out of hatred
These are dry bones that clanked while resisting
These are dry bones that have seen heavenly lightning strike,
have listened, head-cocked, to the growing clamor of the
earth's
creatures
These are the dry bones of a Man
After millions of years,
Millions of years in the layered earth
When a future anthropologist
Geologist
Or archeologist
Digs up my bones
Will he please under the same burning sun
Raise up these watery airy remains and
Seek out the Man.
1968
translation by Andrew Emerson