Text: Wang Shihui Picture: From the Internet
Old Uncle Hei’s surname is Hei, and his nickname is Yuan Cheng. He has never left our village called Heijiazhai in his life. Although he and I have different surnames and do not belong to the same family, according to the seniority in the village, he is higher than me, so I have to call him uncle. Over the years, I have rarely called him Uncle Yuan Cheng, and I have always called him Uncle Lao Hei. I have long been used to it.
Old Uncle Hei also went to school in the early days. In his hometown, the primary school was in Heijiazhai, and the junior high school was moved to a school jointly run by several villages. It was not far from home, only three or four miles away.
To be honest, Uncle Lao Hei's academic performance in junior high school was not very good, and the teachers were not optimistic about him. However, he was full of confidence and never belittled himself or gave up on himself. He always felt that as long as he kept working hard, everything would change.
In order to cheer himself up, he also wrote some warning sentences on larger pieces of paper with a brush, and pasted them one by one on the walls of his house, which looked very atmospheric.
For example, he wrote "A gorgeous fall is better than meaningless wandering", "The most admirable scenery is the footprint of one's own struggle", "The best response to life is to live happily", and "When you use diligence to welcome the light, the light will soon shine on you"... I don't know if he made up these sentences himself or copied them from where.
He knew that Zhuge Liang 's nickname "Wolong" during the Three Kingdoms period was quite interesting, so he followed suit and gave himself a nickname, "Zheniao", which means "hibernating bird". The dormant bird will one day fly high into the distance, Uncle Hei thought and firmly believed this.
However, the ideal is very full, and the reality is very skinny. Uncle Hei's bones are very hard, but his fate is very bitter. When he just learned to walk, his mother passed away due to illness, leaving him and his father behind. The father and son depended on each other for life.
No matter how hard my father worked and how he peed, he finally grew up. However, when he was in the second grade of junior high school, his father cut down a tree and fell from the top of the tree. He died before being sent to the hospital.
Uncle Lao Hei completely lost his support in life, and going to school became unsustainable. He had to drop out of school and go home to earn work points by working with the production team, which solved the problem of making ends meet.
Uncle Hei planted a dream in his heart when he was in school - to go to college in this life and become a poet. This dream has only sprouted, and has not yet taken out its leaves. The cruel reality has wiped out half of it, and the remaining half seems to give him some hope.
Therefore, Uncle Lao Hei persevered and, based on his meager cultural foundation, practiced writing line by line to build his dream of being a poet. He even stubbornly believed that as long as he persisted and worked hard for it, being a farmer and being a poet would become parallel railroad tracks in his life extending into the distance. In the future, his life would include both poetry and distance.
In Heijiazhai, people all know that Uncle Hei can talk to me, and I think so myself. This is not only because of the so-called uncle-nephew relationship, but more importantly because we have similar interests - both are followers of 's muse .
After graduating from Teachers College , I entered a middle school in the county and became a teacher. I no longer had to worry about making ends meet, so I had more conditions to study poetry.
Three years after I started working, I initiated the establishment of the "Blue Fire Poetry Society" that covered the entire county and later had a certain influence in the entire northern Henan region. Uncle Lao Hei was recruited as one of the first members and was invited to attend the founding meeting of the poetry society held in the county.
That time, it was probably Uncle Lao Hei’s first time entering the county town—if I guessed correctly. Of course, I was just guessing from the bottom of my heart, and I didn’t ask directly.
Uncle Lao Hei's poetry creation can really be called persistence. It is a love from the bottom of his heart and a pursuit deep in his soul.
lives alone and is very poor. When you visit his home, it is basically close to the situation described by the word "house with four walls". However, even in such a difficult life, he can still burn the flame of poetry in his heart.
Maybe it is really limited by cultural background, maybe it is a lack of poetry genes acquired innately, maybe there are other reasons that I can't guess. Anyway, Uncle Hei has been writing poetry for many years, but he has not made any progress. He has accumulated a pile of poems, but he can't pick out a few decent ones.
Even so, I have never poured cold water on him. Every time I go back to my hometown and he shows me a new work, I read it carefully. After reading it, I have to say what I think is appropriate - it can be regarded as a review.
Although Uncle Hei's poems cannot be complimented by me, I still occasionally select a few poems, help him polish them and publish them, sometimes in the poetry club's magazine, sometimes in the supplement of the county newspaper that I participate in editing.
I know, Uncle Hei needs this. I also know that he has been living alone and in poverty for these years, and he is able to persevere day after day precisely because he still has the pillar of poetry in his heart to support him.
Uncle Hei’s poems sometimes surprise me and touch me deeply. Once, I was browsing Uncle Hei's poems in my hometown, and accidentally caught two lines of text: "I think I should have a son/But who will be my wife?"
Although the poems are plain and uncarved, they are like a surge of acid mist in an instant, which makes me want to cry and make me feel panic. I understood Uncle Hei's thoughts, even though he never showed it in front of me. Yes, Uncle Hei really should have a family, but... looking at the situation between him and that so-called family, I can only turn my back and sigh for him.
Uncle Hei's dream of being a poet was finally stopped and fixed in the "dream" stage. No one can tell whether the difference between his "dream" and "realization" is the last kilometer or a further distance.
Because he was already dead. He died on a snowy winter night at the age of 65.
