After harvest, talking flutes announce the wrestling season.
Villagers gather to flute tunes by moonlight
to watch their young men wrestle.
The wrestlers’ bodies glow like molten bronze;
their muscles are ripe as millet, full to the husk.
All summer, their arms planted and reaped.
Now, like the musician, who first carves a flute,
then fills it with his breath,
the wrestlers stand apart,
then improvise and flex.