The Preface to The Wings of The Stone

By Pu Chidaling

Translated by Zheng Zhaomei

Like fallen leaves, flocks of geese flew away in the northern sky. Unnoticeable, another season has come to its end !

The cycling, flying days deposit in the long river of my memory. A never-old song keeps nourishing the southern plateau: the high stand of the Tianpusa, the dolorous mother tongue, the scriptures chanting of Bimo, the towering mountains, the running rivers, the wandering sheep herds, the golden buckwheat...All the vigorous life are thriving on this land of the southern plateau where the Yi people live.

When I am going across this vast land, I hear that the eloquent Bimo brings life to all the inherited words and stories, the lonely horses in the light reflected from the snow, the narrow snaky roads in Cuckoo' s singing;the torches lit in the legendary dances, the rising mist produced by the struggle and mingling of the soul and the evil, the continuing family lines and all the ancient languages and recordings. The thick sound of Kezhe, the prolonged Bier and the melodious songs reach farther and farther on the land of the Southern Plateau, restored to life in the smoke rising from chimneys.

Facing the southern plateau and sitting cross-legged on the hill in my hometown, I can foresee a sight as a divide line at the top of the highest hill on the poetic land of my hometown. On one side is the endless happiness, while on the other the indescribable pain, which reminds me of the Maya people living in the dense American jungle, who, deep in their totemic fantasies, will look in the direction of a giant red stone with awe. The multiple happiness and even pain in one' s heart is like reading of a poem full of metaphors. In the candle light from this holy land, I can touch and feel the mysterious, hidden yet real words, which are burning vigorously in my heart and pointing to the formless poetic watershed.

Every pious and creative poet has his own spiritual hometown, but instead of being its master, he is a child unshakably devoted to it. As a poet, what fills his heart are happiness and fullness, and even the startling pain. What a poet can grasp and feel are the inherited inspiration and his gift from the heaven, just like the countless flying feathers in the sunlight, or the words for sacrifice inscribed on stones, or the invisible water rising to the bank or remaining in the air, or the broken chapters of history and civilization from the Yin Ruins, or the incurable lonely moon living in its nest, or the tree becoming old in the dim light in his poetic hometown…

When all my thoughts arrive in the southern plateau in the sunlight, all my fantasies come to the core areas of the red earth in the moonlight, all the love and hate, happiness and tears, respect and equality I feel need to be treasured the way we do to our eyes. My hometown endows me with flesh and vitality, while my spiritual hometown provides me with the precious room for poetry.

Strolling in my spiritual hometown, I believe that, like everything else in the nature, all the life full of vitality on this piece of land not only belong to the human being, but also to the flowers, the grass, the trees, the rain, the clouds, the fireflies, the humming of the bugs, the migrating birds, the hungry wolves, and to my sad mother tongue…

Filled with gratitude, I would spend my whole life watching my poetic hometown , from which the truth is revealed: the melody sung by the free flow of rivers seems to me the deep sigh from the earth and its inhabitants; and the spectacle of the river flapping its banks is the eternal advice from the mother of human beings.

On this poetic land, the sunlight rests itself on the bones. A cultivating stone nests itself in the mountain. The flying hawks in the night departs from the imagination of the stone. All the phantoms in the valley leaves the land utterly desolate. I witness carriages with all the gods swarming out on the mountain and rows of spirit tablets looking around in the crematoria. The scriptures chanting sounds like the running sheep flock and the ebbing of the chanting smothers the sun.

The waist sword was unfastened; the cloak was taken off; and the fire pit was lit.

Along the river, all the prayers and congratulatory messages for the stone are put on the cliff where the hawks have had a rest. The river rises to the bank; all the whispering lies are exiled into the mist. The sheep flock walk upstream deeper into the wheat fields. The eulogies from the tongue of Bimo trace their way to the source of the water and the ancestors. In retrospection and chase, a spring has dried up; a fir tree is cut down; a fire pit is lit; a nest of stones is transferred; a soul is released; a big family branch are comforted…

I am facing the southern plateau, a silent river in my sight, the red earth plowed with shares from the hill in my hometown. What I harvest is the life full of vitality, so fresh, so dignified. It is my spiritual hometown I converted in my poetic faith which I can never turn my back to.

On this piece of poetic land, I am willing to stick to the loneliness, to return my glance back into my heart, and then let out of my sadness as pure as my mother tongue, in a beautiful short poem praising mercy and nobleness.

I live on the poetic land and hear the low pastoral, the lyrics of which mostly come from words for sacrifice. In the scarlet night, I am lost in the meditation to clarify the puzzling situation I am in. Oh, my rhythmic, gained, depressed, fascinating hometown!

Alive, I am a lonely stone with invisible wings, resting in a mystery —— some hidden signals, some inspirational words from gods, and a frozen soul, which reveals time in the remote future.

So I write this preface.