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Presentation and translation by Wilfredo Carrizales
By Literary Paper -May 24, 2020
Tsering Woeser as a poet, activist, Lhasa-born Tibetan blogger and essayist, in 1966. She is mixed Chinese-Tibetan. His grandfather was an officer in the Kuomintang army and his father was a senior officer in the People's Liberation Army.. He graduated from the University of Southwestern Nationalities (located in Chengdu, Proviction of Sichuan, China) in Chinese Literature. She worked as a reporter in the Garze prefecture (Tibet) and later in Lhasa. He lived in Beijing since 2003 as a result of political problems. She is married to renowned Chinese author Wang Lixiong., who frequently writes about Tibet. Woeser is one of the few Tibetan authors who writes in Chinese. When the Chinese government refused to give him a passport, she filed a lawsuit with the authorities.
Tsering Woeser is the author of the book Notes on Tibet, which was banned by the Chinese government around September 2003. He lost his job at “Radio Free Asia”. However, He continues publishing articles and poems on his blogs. During 2008 a el Tibet, She and her husband were placed under house arrest after speaking to reporters.. When she received the “Prince Claus Award” in 2011, he was prohibited from receiving it at the Dutch embassy in Beijing. Woeser defends the actions of the Tibetan rebellion of 1905 against the invasion and massacre of Chinese general Zhao Erfeng.
Tsering Woeser has published since the year 1999 in both mainland China and Taiwan. So far they have published seven books., the last of them titled Tibet under fire: self-immolation against the Chinese authority (London, 2016). The poems selected here have been extracted from the book True Heart of Tibet, later edited in 2008 In New York.
Remembrance of a destroyed Buddha
Twenty days since I left Lhasa
But I still see the Buddha statue with its face smashed.
It was at a street vendor's stall in front of the Tromsikhang neighborhood office..
I noticed it from a distance.
He had gone to the Tromsikhang market to buy droma (1),
But at the sight a sudden regret assailed me.
I went ahead –I couldn't help him- to this thing so crushed:
He seemed alive, leaning against a shelf, in agony,
The crushed face, a severed arm, the entire figure cut at the waist.
Damaged so bad, leaning against a pile of merchandise
that surrounded him: soy sauce, canned beans, condiments for salads and roll after
(toilet paper roll,
Everything introduced into our lives a long time ago from the interior of China.
Around his neck an ornament, once exquisite, inlay with colored stones,
And in his chest a portentous beast with the head of a lion and the body of a man,
Crowded on a fragmentary chorten (2).
¿On what sacred altar or pious home were these things once venerated?
Damaged so badly and leaning against the pile of merchandise,
The calm of calm waters emanated, but the pain pricked me inside the marrow:
As if looking in sorrow, I felt a story being represented
That had both a present and a past.
I was shaken by the dark destiny that had brought us together,
As if melted snow from the high peaks had filled my being.
Caressing your knees, the peddler made a move:
“Come on, ¡buy it! ¿Doesn't the old Buddha look great??”
“¿When they hit him like that?”, I asked.
“¡Obviously during the Cultural Revolution!”, looked quickly. “It had to be the Revolution
(Cultural”.
“¿How much does it cost?” I wanted to buy it and take it home.,
But the Jiangxi peddler (3) I wouldn't give it up for less than three thousand yuan.
So, reluctantly and with regret, and many regrets,
I let the broken Buddha shed rays of sorrow.
I just took some pictures,
So when I miss him,
I go back to my computer and take a look..
Friends say it may have been a brand new Buddha, ruined like this
To achieve a higher price and the link with the Cultural Revolution was a fiction.
Chance, but the pain remains.
I wrote these lines to try to allow you to leave.
________
1.- a kind of root, similar to ginseng, that is consumed to accompany certain foods.
2.-Sanctuary or Buddhist temple. Typically the tomb of a saint or a monument to the Buddha. In its beginnings it was a monumental stone or a mud brick structure and being sacred, he protected himself. The basic structure of a chorten is square and symbolizes the earth and also has a dome that symbolizes water and thirteen steps of illumination that symbolize the element of fire..
3.- South China Province.
On the way
On the road with irritable spirit,
I will escape the chaos of this floating world,
I choose a place to settle,
I find chosen words
To explain this transit of the Wheel (1).
On the way one finds by chance
Men and women of immense dignity;
One's natural pride is humiliated.
The ruins that Tibet spreads with shadows as dark as night
They have a nobility that is not found in ordinary men.
Among these meetings:
One dear to me, largely lost,
Bright, unconditional,
Negligent.
Yo, also, I am pure and honest;
Mine, also, It is a sincere and benevolent heart;
I wish like the seasons change; I can change with them.
I don't need gifts from one to another;
We are gifts.
On the way, an elder of my people says:
“Golden flowers bloom on golden mountains;
While the golden flowers bloomed, he didn't come;
and when it came, the flowers had died.
Silver flowers bloom over silver mountains;
While the silver flowers bloomed, he didn't come;
and when it came, "The flowers had died.".
On the way, walking alone.
An old book without a map,
a pen, not much to eat,
Ballads from a foreign land:
These will suffice. On the way,
I see a black horse
Who does not bend his head to graze, but he shakes his hooves,
It makes me angry that he can't run free.
Still too, in deep meditation, dig between the vast mountains,
The hidden ways of men.
¿What kind of heart will honor and revere them?
On the way, a pious mudra (2) not complex,
But unhealthy fits a vile face.
A string of special mantras (3) it is not rigid,
But they are vibrating from lips stained with lies.
On the way,
I grab a flower, not of this world,
I hurry before I die, searching in all directions,
May I introduce her to an old man in a dark red robe.
A long-awaited gem,
A bundle of a smile:
These bonds the generations tighten.
________
1.-The wheel is an ancient symbol of India. Implies motion, change and continuity. It was originally a solar symbol. Later Buddhism took that symbol to represent the Wheel of the Law (buddhist) o Dharma.
2.-In Tibetan Buddhism, mudra means sign. Vajravarahi (the fiery form of Vajrayogini) It is embellished with five tantric ornaments, all made of human bones, They are collectively called “the five mudras.”.
3.- Sacred sayings or prayers.
Lhasa nights
¡Oh Lhasa, nights that seem like dreams!
A certain lotus may have never bloomed,
Sometimes a wine glass breaks on a spigot.,
There are still people, precisely a few – ¿who praises them
With such a spirit? – to whom this mobile party
It seems like Paradise to them for self-chosen exile.
And (imperceptibly) they cry, it's just
For a relative whom they cannot support.
¡Oh Lhasa, nights of regret!
Some bluebird may have never chirped
And sometimes the garments are smudged with dust.
There are still people, precisely a few – ¿who propagates
That plague? – who see a fleeting shine. time is like
A pool where the willing ego sinks.
Countless illusions, always so seductive,
They cannot lure a reincarnated relative back.
¡Oh Lhasa, nights like nowhere else!
There is a love that has never happened
And certain kinship gradually mixed.
There is still a man, perhaps just one – ¿what kind
lightning strikes? – that makes a suffocating destiny
Serve as the hinge of reconciliation.
¡On the infinite wheel of birth and death
¡I wish that you will always be my relative!
A sheet of paper can become a knife
A sheet of paper can become a knife
– A bit sharp too.
I was just turning the page
When the ring finger of my right hand was chopped off at the knuckle.
Although small, the sudden wound spurted blood,
A thread as fine as silk and a little sharp.
Shocking transformation,
From paper to knife:
There must have been some error there., o
Some kind of turning point.
This ordinary paper… a chill of fear.
The past
This snow covered mountain, flux, It's not my snow mountain.
My mountains of snow are the mountains of the past,
Far away at the edge of the sky, sacred and pure:
many lotuses, eight open petals,
¡Oh, many lotuses, eight open petals!
It's the lottery, that withers, It can't be my lotus.
My lotus is the lotus of the past,
Wrapping the mountains in snow, lovingly,
Many prayer flags, five colors in agitation (1).
¡Oh, many prayer flags, five colors in agitation!
The past, the past… ¡such a past!
A multitude of divinities protected our homeland
Like a lama who keeps watch over souls,
Like a mastiff that stands guard in the tent.
But the multitude of divinities is long gone, now,
The multitude of divinities are long gone.
1.- Prayer flags are rectangular colored fabrics. They are often found strung and strung on the backs of mountains and high peaks.. They are used to consecrate and protect environments and for other purposes.. It is believed that these flags have their origin in the Bon shamanic religion., whose shamans used simple flags of primary colors in Tibet. Traditional prayer flags include wood block-printed texts and images from Tibetan Buddhism. The five colors or “five pure lights”” that are most commonly used are: blanco (learning and knowledge), azul (purity and healing), rojo (strength and preservation), verde (balance and harmony) and yellow (uprooting and resignation).
*Wilfredo Carrizales (1951) he is a poet, narrator, sinologist, Chinese compiler and translator.
