Ha Yi Yu: Dedication

Hear Great Spirit of the River,
My kind spawned in your blood
not so long ago.
Like you I have lived in the clouds,
have fallen
and crawled – my length many times broken – home,
have seethed with lightning
and have inflicted lightning.
I would rise and would have my people rise
and fall
like the rain
and rise again.
The linden leaf fell,
brown wave broken by boulder
and thrown into air,
and, in this spring’s sun, in one bud,
new veins, like glowing rivulets of lava, flare.