Self-Portrait

—Wind blows over a ridge, speaking softly to a child at twilight.

The wind goes off into the distance where a tale awaits it.

Leave your name on this land, child, for your time will come to die proudly.

I am history written on this land in the Nuosu tongue

I was born to a woman who could hardly bear to cut the birth cord

My pain-racked name

My beautiful name

My name full of hope

Is a poem of manhood

Gestated for a thousand years

By a woman at her spindle

My tradition-bearing father

Is a man among men

People call him Zhyge Alu^〔1〕

My never-aging mother

Is a singer upon this land

She is its deep-running river

My eternal beloved

Is a beauty among beauties

People call her Gamo Anyo^〔2〕

In each of my thousand deaths as a man

I lay down to rest facing left

In each of my thousand deaths as a woman

I lay down to rest facing right

At the end of a thousand mourning rites

I am friendly words of a guest from afar

At the high-point of a thousand mourning rites

I am a mother's quavering syllables

Though all this includes me

In truth I am the millennial conflict

Of justice against evil

I am the millennial descendant

Of love and fantasy

Truly down through the centuries

All the mislaid wedding plans

Have been mine

All the treachery and loyalty

All the births and deaths

Have been mine

Ah world, let me give an answer

I—am—a—Nuosu!

注释

〔1〕Zhyge Alu is a mythic hero of the Nuosu whose exploits are recounted in an epic of the same name.

〔2〕Gamo Anyo is a legendary beauty of the Nuosu people.