MOURNING MY ELDER BROTHER

After you died,

when the field was half plowed,

the ox collapsed

and the plowman shouted.

Soon villagers appeared,

bled the corpse,

then started cutting.

In forty minutes

a whole ox gone.

The field remained

half plowed

beneath a horned new moon.

After you died,

a magpie flew under our eaves.

Eleven years and I’m still wandering,

neither reborn

nor have I planted a living pine.

What use if you returned?

A leaf spins down to the yard.

I’m ashamed to face your death.

After you died,

a blade of yellow grass stood

hopeless before the lamps of a thousand houses.

Amidst other grass, alone,

or alone on the riverbank.

After you died,

all this

smoky as rain on an old bridge

south of the Yangtze.