Palden Gyatso was Made to Shit in a Bucket
for thirty three years
He ate with animal and human manure
sticking to his fingers.
Wore the same clothes
the parasites in his underpants
as numerous as words in a newspaper.
His teeth knocked out from electric shocks
administered in the mouth.
He taught his tongue to soothe the uprooted.
Everyday
he witnessed prisoners diving
into a wheat chopper
to breathe easy forever.
Every night before sleeping
he traced the text of the Buddha
with fingers of thoughts, taught himself compassion.
Compassion
for those who’d lit bonfires of sacred books
vandalised monasteries
rounded him as he’d sat in peaceful protest
Protesting
to live on the path of the Buddha
to have a homeland, a place where
children could have names like Tenzin and Palden
This Gelug monk
maroon robes and all
as glorious in captivity
as he was christened at birth
Fingers turning prayer beads
even when the rosary was not in his hands
Palden Gyatso was a Tibetan Buddhist monk, arrested for protesting during the Chinese invasion of Tibet, he spent 33 years in Chinese prisons and labor camps, where he was extensively tortured, and served the longest term of any Tibetan political prisoner. The name Palden means Glorious in Tibetan.
Himalayan Trek
In the rhododendron lanes
my heavy flesh disintegrates
becomes empty as air.
A sliver of dry skin nailed to the door
of an emaciated past.
Silence is a balm
to your metal-slapping-metal absence.
Easy to slit the sternum
of stoic mountains with a gaze.
Difficult to stitch the gaping wound.
I want to know that I died really well.
In sunflowers we see the sun
in home, burdens
in death, preparedness
Flaky waxy rivulets of roads
lead to annatto loneliness,
Nothing else.
Country roads take me home, Denver sang.
In the Himalayas,
rice and honour seem to be one.
Honey pledges itself
to the warm thick fingers of seekers.
Nights are coolants
poured into twice withered, tired
calves, ankles, feet.
When I travel, I meet myself.
Inside lakes and in rivers,
rounded stones bathe
all life long.
Drenched in crystal clear water
three sixty five days, year after year.
My thirst, so thirsty,
that I wish to become them.
Feeling nothing but the rush of water.
How nice to be a stone.
Baobab: The Tree of Life
“Wisdom is like a baobab tree;
no one individual can embrace it."
— African proverb
Your arms spread wide against the blue sky
as if in supplication.
The symbol of longevity
now thirsting for habitat.
Time could never have yellowed your roots
but the two-degree rise did.
Earth teetering like a mother
who has lost her child.
The small act of new leaves
shrivelling your smooth, gallon-thick trunk.
Kindness
extracted from you through stomata straws.
Your hairless crown shorn of pride -
of predating mankind, predating, the continental drift.
We planned once to drink at a bar inside you
through the arched doorways of a beloved Baobab.
In the sexy dimness of xylem and phloem walls.
Along cool alleys of a tree community.
But there’s no doing that now.
We carry with us the skeletons of such dreams.
Sickened that we could threaten a giver.
Reduce you to cowering against our greed.
Your fat, jovial body, ashen.
from how much we took.
And never returned.
Sunbird Afternoon
We could be turquoise bright
or charcoal dark, with ourselves.
It’s been ages since I whistled
a noon away. Ages.
Here on the copper-green lawns
of laziness, I can’t bear your words
traversing so far into the future. I haven’t
even drunk the nectar of the moment yet.
Light catches the iridescent sheen
in your eyes, gleams like secret angles
of feathers knitted with light.
My resolve twirls on one leg -
the deep cobalt of a butterfly pea or
a rare crimson frangipani? Hunger is
a bright round eye peeping from the
leaves of your fingers. Take me into
the future now. A dart, an arrow in flight.
The sun’s rays have pierced the bark of the day;
A halo hovers over us softly.
I can bear your words now.
Take me far.
Hibakujumoku: Survivor Trees
Seventy three years later,
the "A-BOMB" gingko trees
still grow in Hiroshima.
They’d sprouted shoots
a year after the bombing;
sapling flags of resilience.
Jujube and Persimmon,
inventing a language of survival,
seeds filled with hymns.
Little Boy, something resolved
to stand up to you
as you descended from the skies.
Rising from ground zero
a fist of saffron yellow.
a crown of golden amber.
See how it sparkles
how it defies
the dead wood of a uranium year.
The Gingko was a leveller
a balm to the burns
Adorn your bosom with its fan-shaped leaf.
In the spring of 1946, following the Hiroshima bombing, the ginkgo trees bloomed again and continued to do so every spring after that. Today, each tree has a name and is marked by a plaque. They’re now natural memorials, reminders that evolution has equipped life to survive even the greatest catastrophes wrought by humans.
These poems were part of The Poetry Issue 2023, curated by Shireen Quadri. © The Punch Magazine. No part of these poems should be reproduced anywhere without the prior permission of The Punch Magazine.
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