The Old Mouth Harp Maker

—Whose mouth harp is making these flashes in sunlight, that so resemble a dragonfly's wings?

1　In a valley encircled by valleys encircled by mountains

His hammer-taps pierce the lonely silent mist

Music splashes down like starry dewdrops

Making the virgin forest pause in its windy dance

So send out this manly vibration

Across the curvy waist of a highland lake

Under the moon begin to tie

New bonds of love and beauty

2　His timeworn and wrinkled hands

Are a highland river in December

Flowing with earth-toned resonance

Flowing with excited and dejected moods

As he takes his time snipping

The warm-hued golden bronze

3　Through his hands a fish of freedom swims

With fins that undulate in tones of bronze

And the fish with its metallic scales crashes

Against high shoals he causes to appear

Setting loose many lovely dragonflies

To fly about in this story-like world

4　Glinting wings of dragonflies will thrum

Sounding up to the sunny vault of sky

Sounding over the land's mountain peaks

Sounding over a man's forehead

Sounding over a woman's lips

Sounding over a child's earring

Glinting wings of a dragonfly will thrum

Sounding in the east

Sounding in the west

Sounding in the ears of the yellow race

Sounding in the ears of the black race

Sounding in the ears of the white race

Sounding upstream on the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers

Sounding downstream on the Mississippi

These are sounds of the Nuosu from antiquity

These are sounds from within the Nuosu soul

5　When the moon rises from behind a great mountain