I am Lü De An
I've been a poet for four decades
And a painter for the same amount of time
Basically I had a happy childhood
Grew up in family togetherness
I went to work in the countryside at the first year of my senior high
Had so many fun experiences
Like I ushered in my era earlier
I love laboring
I love working out
Just to see who's the strongest man
Instead of who's the one that read the most
At that time
I came across a collection of Pushkin's poems
And it inspired me to write free verses
Also I happened to have a crush on a girl
So I wrote the girl poems like letter
I went abroad in the early 1990s
I told my friend
Do not email me
Send me hand-written letters
I remember there was one time
Then I was a painter in New York
Painting on the street
Suddenly it occurred to me
That I haven't written to Shu Ting for a long time
So I wrote a letter on the spot
With my charcoal pencil
Think about it
With charcoal pencil, dust all over the place
I wrote her a letter
Later she wrote back
Saying that upon finishing my letter
Charcoal dust had covered her hands
And I was delighted to know it
Three years of living abroad
Made me aware of my identity as a foreigner
I had to return to my home country
I didn't know
That I had a house
Of my own
Piles of stones in the front yard
Some dark and round
Hatched from the fertile soil
Some broken and incomplete
Like they fell from the sky
Surrounding the house was some kind of silence
That had been present since the day it's built
I didn't try to build a house like those in the city
There was no cement, only brick and wood structures
When the house is roofed
All windows installed
The scenery outside the window is all yours
I often challenge myself at night
Carrying a lamp or flashlight
Go into the mountains at night
To play chess and chat with my neighbors
In this wild place
We were worried about sleeping here
But later I realized
That if your home is here
You have nothing to fear
Writing poetry on my mountain
Brings me a more intuitive
Understanding of traditional classical poetry
Stones, creeks
And Chinese brush paintings
All merge into one huge image
Pushing you
Some of my paintings were sold
And some collectors told me
That my imageless painting
Hanging in his hall
It always catches the eyes of the shareholders
When they come for meeting
They gaze into the painting as if in a trance
Lately I've been listening to a song a lot
Sung by a young singer
A quite sad song
In part of the song
The singer is almost crying
I am fascinated by the song
Like I was a young man again
In three decades
I travelled back and forth
Between New York and China
It's like people of our time
The lose of home is a common state among us
A peasant named Taodi lives in the mountain
He cut a snake one day
The snake was cut down in two and fell off
But he couldn't find the other half anywhere
He thought it slipped away
I suddenly felt
That I was the other half who came back
Back to his hometown
Then built a house here
To retrieve the feeling of home