‘Banishment’ and Other Poems

When Bhuchung D. Sonam left his homeland of Tibet in the winter of 1982, he didn’t realize that he would never be able to return. In exile, he turned to writing as a way of expressing his grief and frustration—and a way of preserving the idea of his homeland.

Now, Sonam works as a writer, publisher, and translator, and his press, TibetWrites, has published more than fifty books centering modern Tibetan voices. Sonam views the work of TibetWrites as elevating the stories of ordinary Tibetans and, in the process, building connections and solidarity in the global Tibetan community. “We are less than 200,000 Tibetan refugees, and we are scattered across more than thirty different countries around the world, but our aspiration for a future Tibet must go on,” he told Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen. “If we are to create this community of people who have some invisible connection, I think art does that.” 

Read three of Sonam’s poems below, and then listen to him discuss them on a recent episode of Tricycle Talks.

***

Banishment

Away from home
I live in my thirty-sixth rented room
With a trapped bee and a three-legged spider
Spider crawls on the wall and I on the floor
Bee bangs at the window and I on the table
Often we stare at each other
Sharing our pool of loneliness
They paint the wall with droppings and webs
I give them isolated words
net, maze, tangle
wings, buzz, flutter

Away from home
My minutes are hours
Spider travels from the window to the ceiling
Bee flies from the window to the bin
I stare out of the window
Neither speaks each other’s tongue

I wish
You would go deaf
Before my silence

Dog Dead

There is no such thing
as middle path
We all gravitate to our sides.

If there is a path in the middle
I would be the first to find it.
I am neither here nor there . . .
To her right
To your left
Far from their centre.

There is a dog chewing a bone
In the middle of the path
A truck comes
Speeding

Yonrupon’s Daughter

And then I saw Lhadon
coming from afar
A golden sceptre in her hand –
thunder flashed, sky blackened
fog entered my mind
fear shook my heart
tears stung my eyes
For a moment I thought
She was going to strike me into fragmentation
My useless self splattered in ten directions
I pinched myself
I punched myself
I kicked myself
I was looking for a runaway exit
The Great Wall of China stood behind me –
I was locked, shocked
There was nothing I could do
In desperation I faced her
She was still coming towards me
Now holding a bouquet of white roses
Seeing me she raised her hand
And the roses disappeared
Petals swirled in the sky
Thorns rained down –
thud thud thud heavy heavy heavy
I gaped my mouth
My heart pounded on a
Chopping board
The sun shone in the sky
Light streamed into my head
I wanted to jump, shout, cry, pounce
Wozila! Wozila!
illusion . . . delusion . . . hallucination . . . 
I banged my head on the wall
Focused my eyes straight forward
And saw Lhadon . . . 
Now dashing towards me
Locks of hair waving in the wind
Her boots pounding the dry earth
Puffs of dust flying in air
She was a wild yak in the Himalayas
Blood raging in her veins like Yarlung River
I stared into the sky and prayed
Prayed to a million gods and goddesses I knew
Chenrezig Khyenno! Jampel Yang Khyenno!
Jetsun Dolma Khyenno! Palden Lhamo Khyenno!
Gonpo Ludrup Khyenno! Arya Deva Khyenno!
When I finished chanting the last name
Of the last god thinking this
Was my last day on this earth . . . 
Silence occupied the universe
The world sank to a deep coma
The sun stopped
The wall behind faded
There in front of me was Lhadon fisted hand stretched towards me
I was speechless . . . 
I did not know what to say . . . 
Do I have to say something?
Do I?
Then . . . 
Then . . . 
She slowly opened her hands and in her palms
were the broken fragments of the yellow stars
She plucked from the wall of the People’s Great Hall
My head reeled in excitement
My heart struck my chest
From somewhere deep inside
I found my voice . . . 
Ah! Lhadon, I said
This is what I’ve always wanted to see
The broken fragments of those yellow stars
That covered my mother’s snow
Darkened my father’s sky
Those yellow stars
They blocked my grandfather’s rivers
Pierced my grandmother’s tent
Yellow stars fractured my dreams.
I looked about
And realized
There were people around me
All along there were voices
Voices saying many different things
Ah! Lhadon
You are Songtsen Gampo’s niece
You are Yonrupon’s daughter
You are Thupten Ngodup’s sister
I am Lang Darma’s grandson
Dhondup Gyal’s cousin.

You and I travel the same road.
At the end of this road is the land
We came from.

Notes:

Yonrupon: Yonrupon Sonam Wangyal was a warrior from Lithang in Kham, Eastern Tibet. In the winter of 1956, he was inside Lithang Monastery fighting against the Red Army. Yonrupon and his men fought for over two months and killed as many Chinese soldiers as they could. In the end, he decided to surrender but only to the Chinese general. When the general met him, Yonrupon pumped six rounds into the general. Immediately, the Chinese soldiers fired on Yonrupon. He was 25 years old.

wozila: a Tibetan expression which could mean surprise, disbelief, amazement, aghast, disappointment etc.

Songtsen Gampo: Songtsen (617–649 CE) was born in Meldro Gongkar near Lhasa, Tibet’s capital city. In 630 at the age of thirteen, he succeeded his father Namri Songtsen to become the thirty-first king of the Tibetan Empire. He married daughters of the Chinese Emperor and the Nepalese King and introduced Buddhism into Tibet. Amongst his many achievements were the conquest of Zhang Zhung kingdom and sending his minister, Thonmi Sambhota, to India to devise the Tibetan script.

Thubten Ngodup: A former army and a cook at a monastery in Dharamsala, who set himself on fire in India’s capital on 27 April 1998 during an indefinite hunger-strike organized by Tibetan Youth Congress. Ngodup was arguably the first-ever Tibetan to self-immolate in Tibet’s struggle for freedom.

Lang Darma: Wudum Tsenpo (803–842 CE), or popularly Lang Darma, was the elder brother of Tri Ralpachen, who was one of Tibet’s three great religious kings. Darma supposedly persecuted Buddhism and its practitioners after he succeeded his brother as the king of Tibet. In 842, a Buddhist monk named Lhalung Paldor killed Lang Darma while he was in Jokhang Temple in Lhasa. The assassination of Darma ended the militarily powerful central rule by tsenpos, or kings, and the Tibetan empire disintegrated into smaller fiefdoms.

Dhondup Gyal: Gyal (1953–1985) was an enigmatic rebel-poet and writer. He was born in a tiny village in Northeastern Tibet. After braving a broken family and lack of early educational opportunities, his diligence and love of books led him to discover his creative ability and the desire to inspire others. As an iconic figure, one of his many contributions was to restore a love of, and interest in, Tibetan language amongst Tibetan youth. The harmonious rhythm of his pen was a new voice for the ancient tradition. However, he was threatened with dire consequences when his short story titled Tulku, about an incarnate lama who seduces a young girl, was published in 1981. In November 1985 Dhondup Gyal apparently committed suicide in his room in Chabcha, Northeastern Tibet. He was 32.

♦

Reprinted with permission from Blackneck Books, an imprint of TibetWrites.