You could be just as old as my twenty-year-old son, Xi Meng--
He's attending university in London.
At the moment, he and his girlfriend are drinking coffee in a cafe;
they just returned from Istanbul,
and said how they liked the sun and the fantastic food,
while you lie down on the snowy wilderness--alone,
enveloped by loneliness.
What's your name?
What are your dreams?
Are you immigrating to the UK?
Traveling the world?
You're hidden by the snow;
the ambitions become a tsar have deceived you--
it makes you render your services to the motherland.
And you enter a tank like so
(like a brainwashed Chinese who admires the Putin who invaded Ukraine)
A dictatorship is so horrific!
Your mother waits for you to come home;
she made a pot of the world's tastiest asparagus soup,
but you've already lied flat and rigid,
viciously shot by a ruthless assault rifle;
you will not wake up to your loved ones' cries.
The snow covers you again...
Translated by Elda Mengisto (孟乐达)