DUSK
   
   
   
   

   
   Dusk arrives. Be still. People bow and gently leave the earth
   
   Clouds float slowly away, become memories. A trickle of blood spreads through history's night sky. I light the oil lamp, pass my hand through its flame
   
   We enter the darkening forest. There, only a few will
   
   What else can I say? The songs that followed the flocks all day return to the nest, brushing our faces with wings. The seeds lie scattered on dark waters. Listen, closely, to the sounds of their sprouting. Listen to the blood spread over the glass slide. On the anxious horizon, indistinct sycamores
   
   How do our cries differ from the birds? Is it only the dark thoughts that wound our voices? Oh, the solidity of rocks. Dusk on the solid rocks. For thousands of years, our bodies have been weighted down with a heavy rock on each of the thrones of disorder. Our skin grows fissured. What is the great wound that comes after dusk and before night? We swarm about its opening, we dizzy ourselves trying to enter
   
   Strange, now, to stand in that darkness, singing! We scatter the seeds again on dark waters, on slowly pulsing blood. We feel our way through the dark. But listen: that eagle’s scream: the sound of wolves melting into the fields: the recognition of ancestors: the sound of dirt filling our mouths
   
   Be still. This is not yet the true night. Dusk arrives, true dusk, demanding our silence
   
   
   
   
   
   
   XUE DI
   trans by Hil Anderson and Ted Deppe