Wei Zheng

Grave

A friend told me about the burial patterns of his place:
Dig a deep vertical cave in the ground
Dig a horizontal one at the bottom of the former
Put the dead in with care and tears
This reminds me of the sweet potato cellar
Burying a man is much like storing sweet potatoes
I remember when I was a kid and in hot summers
I used to sleep in the sweet potato cellar
It was dark and mysterious deep down the Earth
A living man lying in the cellar is like the dead
Like a sweet potato blossoming a new hope
Like a grass seed hiding itself to germinate