Those tales from the past ah, in the evening wind
Were gathered by an old Yi man into beautiful necklaces
Heavily hanging on the necks of all the children:
Children, please remember! The stories of the ancestors
Do not let them scatter away over the hills full of bitter buckwheat blossoms
----Proem
Boundless primeval chaos
Bleakness overflows in the deep black of night
The stone ruptures releasing dazzling beams of light
The raging fire spreads, amidst the rumble
Transforming reveals the image of a mountain
Therewith, a horde of dark skinned hunter-spirits
Are born into the mother’s wilderness

Multiplying among the bitter roots of grass
Propagating within the moan of the setting sun
The starving curtain layer by layer droops down
Horses’ hooves kick up war’s ruin, dusk wantonly
Glosses the bloody
Atrocity, the distant mountain wind
Whisks away the painful hush before death
Blood ah, heart ah, freezing
Congeals into the wind’s
Quintessential ode that tells no tale . . . . . . .

The cliff far, far, far away, through the ages
In the midst of gnawing and gnashing
This group whose men and women have been blown black by the wild wind
With trunk after trunk of trees stand together
No matter how shrill the rain and snow, coming to warp
Their erect form . . . . . . .

The river carries the drifting trails
Tears and blood smear red the migrating path
This group of Yi, within the bitter buckwheat blossoms’
Beckoning, walk towards the range of the Southern Highlands’
Vastness, it is a kind of mystical revelation
Wavering between the lust for life and the fire of the spirit
Among the mountains and the silence preserved by them
The eyes of people and wolves have met
And on clashing emit red red blood’s fire-glow
Refuse to budge ---- refuse to budge ---- refuse to budge ----
Humanity raises the proclamation of superiority
Beneath the ice ice cold moonbeams
The howl of the pack of beasts briskly tears through night’s garments
Living things and those who have died many times over wrestle
In the wild desert wind, the fire muskets
Unceasingly cry out the mountain range’s funeral
The eyes of this group of Yi seep yearning
Trickle blood droplets of serenity and eternal sorrow

Night extends its cold hard fingers
Rattling the mountain forest, rocking the moist sleep-talk
A large bowl of bitter buckwheat ale spins into a whirl, warming up
Those bodies whose excruciating hardships have formed icicles
Unexpected joy ignites the bonfire
After the savage totem, dance steps
Thumping sound the same as fire’s passion
Snap the taught bowstring of the mountain wilds
Song after song of love ballads
Sprinkle out, while being scaldingly boiled over the blaze . . . . . .

As this, on the southern part of the highland range
This group of gallant men and virtuous women
With great pains struggled to come here. The face carved of stone
Alights the ardent ferity of the rays of light
This group of Yi, ah, from one expanse to the next
Have innumerable beautiful yet sorrowful stories
Sung to the untamable wind, sung to the flowing river
Sung to the ponderous mountain peaks