Shi Hu

(Note: the following is a prose rendering of the meaning of Shi Hu’s poem):

　　Travelling in the mountains of Bali, Shi Hu stopped to rest one evening in a small cottage. Lulled to sleep by the chirping of insects, frogs and birds, he dreamt of his father. Upon awakening, he saw a green bird in front of his window, ruffling its feathers and pecking gently at the window, trying to reach him. He understood that this must be his father’s soul. In tears, he took the name “Mystical Bird.”

　　The setting of Shi Hu’s dream was unfamiliar to him, but he seemed to see his father’s soul in a foreign land. His face had not changed, but he uttered no words and it was as if a barrier stood between them. He recalled that his father’s life had been one of poverty and hardship, heavy with the responsibilities of raising a family, and yet he had always been kind and just. Suddenly Shi Hu was overwhelmed with sadness.

　　In his dream, Shi Hu asked his father about the strange place, about the affairs in his home village, about the fishing in the Landian River, and about the health of his elderly mother.

　　When he awoke, he saw a green bird in front of the window, ruffling its feathers, and it truly seemed as if his father were calling to him, as if his father were speaking jovially with him in the dark night. His father’s soul had come from far away to speak so familiarly with him… How could there be no god?

　　Oh! … His disembodied father had become a cloud-borne green bird; was this so he could reveal the mystic wisdom of heaven? The stars urged Shi Hu not to forget the holiness of Bali, but his father told him, from the centre of the universe, that “his soul belonged to his homeland.”