Resting Place Poem by BEI Ling

A pall has been cast over everything
The misfortune of our birth
Is stamped on the features of a race
Like sunlight hanging over the horizon
See how words of self-pity are repeated to distraction
Till the time for words is gone

We have not been baptized
Yet we stay in God's favored country
Known as "the Beautiful," a beautifully crumbling land
Only by grace of enmity
Are we provided for

Like widening rings of growth
We fight endless, tireless battles with memory
We do battle with our origins by birth
In the sweep of time enacting an interplay
Of death and eternity, life and fetility
In a gigantic empire exhibiting
This preserve of lonely ideology
That belongs to us

Translated by Denis Mair