Sunday October 24
*
A glimpse
forth upon the steep climb
to the leading light of my long day
slight gentle beautiful determined bright one
patiently making her way
she firmly alone firmly herself
to quietly remind me
that not so far away
for she I we two
our warm and bright
future day
and to her then to say to tell
of how she I
we two as one
patiently weave the grapevine
for the backstrap of the loom
as that upon which we weave
the fabric of our future together
And of the sonorous echo
of the great tunchen horn
as it rises out
through snow mountains vast
to the heights
of a mountain covered in mist
Look beautiful one
it’s Mount Minyak Gangkar
lofty sentinel above the abodes
of great mountain deities
the Minyak Rabgang
where rivers of ice
solid they flow
imperceptible yet
inexorable their flow
more than ten thousand feet
down to forests below
As the Hailuogou to plunge
sparkling in the mountain light
vast icy jeweled torrent
steep precipitous fall
vast ice cataract
a thousand meters three thousand feet
from end to end
above the rock
that carries it’s vast weight
to ancient forests
where the birds sing
into the stillness
of millennia untrammeled
A vast settlement
of palaces towering
over twenty thousand feet six thousand meters
into the steel blue sky
their voices howling with the wind
as it tears from crag to crag
on it’s whirling freezing way
with snow and hail and freezing rain
for what in other more temperate places
would fall in a year
here lands upon rocky walls
in but a third of that time
What fierce grandeur this
Mount Jiazi Fang hurls
with a freezing shrieking roar
to Leduo Manyin who answers with clattering retort
as ice crashes a thousand feet
to break on the glacier below
Langge Manyin’s tearing wail descending
to sintering growl as a million tons of ice and snow
plunge to a crevasse below as
Zhongshan Feng looses rocks from his crags
in an interminable shower
to vast rock skree slopes below
as a challenge to
Longshan who raises himself
to full rocky height in icy snow gilt armor
six thousand six hundred eight four metres into
the sky in glittering answer
with Taishan and
Mogangling with their staggering bulk
irritably grinding beneath their glacier teeth
boulders clutched from upon their flanks
into powder
to be loosed in icy rivulets
as bits of streaming muddy clay
and these are but a few
of the deities of this place
Staggering clamor
eternal silence
we can hear all of this
as we hold our bowl of butter tea
to our cold chapped lips
from within a place of where candles burn
with warm glow onto dark tapestry walls
of ornate finery
Gangkar Gonpa is this
monastery of Karma Kagyu fame
scion of intrepid Milarepa
where the chants of hundreds of years
resonate and echo from the stone
a continual bid for peace
and good will for inhabitants
of the lands below
All this not so wonderful
to my straining eyes
as your determined beauty
and swift uplifted grace
that endures with patient dignity
this that I see in you
beneath the open sky
on this morning
of our fall of working and waiting
Lotus blossoms rest
upon the window sill
and so we wait
two as one
we our effort
real and lasting
slight gentle
beautiful one
October 21
* courtesy of A Luminous Diamond (Bright) Crystal Show productions.
reference material for the poem is courtesy of the Footprint Tibet handbook by Gyurme Dorje.