"THE VOICE OF THE MOUNTAIN"

- Mamang Dai

From where I sit on the high platform
I can see the ferry lights crossing criss-crossing the big river.
I know the towns, the estuary mouth. There, beyond the last bank
where the colour drains from heaven I can outline the chapters of the world.
The other day a young man arrived from the village.

Because he could not speak
he brought a gift of fish
from the land of rivers.
It seems such acts are repeated:
We live in territories forever ancient and new, and as we speak in changing
languages

I, also, leave my spear leaning by the tree and try to make a sign. I am an old man sipping the breeze that is forever young.
In my life I have lived many lives.
My voice is sea waves and mountain peaks, In the transfer of symbols I am the chance syllable that orders the world Instructed with history and
miracles.

I am the desert and the rain.
The wild bird that sits in the west. The past that recreates itself
and particles of life that clutch and cling
For thousands of years -
I know, I know these things
as rocks know, burning in the sun's embrace, about clouds, and sudden rain;
as I know a cloud is a cloud is a cloud,
A cloud is this uncertain pulse
that sits over my heart.
In the end the universe yields nothing except a dream of permanence.
Peace is a falsity.

A moment of rest comes after long combat:
From the east the warrior returns with the blood of peonies.
I am the child who died at the edge of the world, the distance between end and
hope.

The star diagram that fell from the sky,
The summer that makes men weep.
I am the woman lost in translation who survives, with happiness to carry on.
I am the breath that opens the mouth of the canyon, the sunlight on the tips of
trees;

There, where the narrow gorge hastens the wind I am the place where memory escapes I am the sleep in the mind of the mountain.

the myth of time,