Mamang Dai Poems

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1.
NO DREAMS

The days are nothing.
Plant and foliage grow silently,
at night a star falls down,
a leopard leaves its footprints.

The wind blows into my eyes
sometimes it stirs my heart
to see the land so plain and beautiful.

If I sit very still
I think I can join the big mountains
in their speechless ardour.

Where no sun is visible
the hills are washed with light.
The river sings
love floats!
love floats!
But I have no dreams.
...

2.
SMALL TOWNS AND THE RIVER

Small towns always remind me of death.
My hometown lies calmly amidst the trees,
it is always the same,
in summer or winter,
with the dust flying,
or the wind howling down the gorge.

Just the other day someone died.
In the dreadful silence we wept
looking at the sad wreath of tuberoses.
Life and death, life and death,
only the rituals are permanent.

The river has a soul.
In the summer it cuts through the land
like a torrent of grief. Sometimes,
sometimes, I think it holds its breath
seeking a land of fish and stars

The river has a soul.
It knows, stretching past the town,
from the first drop of rain to dry earth
and mist on the mountaintops,
the river knows
the immortality of water.

A shrine of happy pictures
marks the days of childhood.
Small towns grow with anxiety
for the future.
The dead are placed pointing west.
When the soul rises
it will walk into the golden east,
into the house of the sun.

In the cool bamboo,
restored in sunlight,
life matters, like this.

In small towns by the river
we all want to walk with the gods.
...

3.
FLOATING ISLAND

The sloping mountain is trying to reach me
stretching down into the water.
Dear one, don't go away.
Rest, rest on my shoulder.

Deep in my centre a woman is asleep
pressing her cheek on my pillow
vivid with dreams.
The birds of summer are nesting in her breast.

Who knows which way the spinning current will spin.
Farewell, blind mountain, pasted on the sky,
when the day is folded away
my heart clings to the life of water.

Into the deep, into the sea green
navigating on a heartbeat,
the lilies are shooting up like swordfish
and the woman is laughing, laughing.
...

4.
PRAYER FLAGS — 2

The wet mountain road.
This is where we spent all our time
wondering if we would get across.

Someone planted a prayer flag in my heart.
Green living, white clouds, and juniper incense
mingled with the blue
left by a sea that once owned this land.

Perhaps the storm will blow it down
someday, after it has halted the wind
a thousand times.

We found each other yesterday,
after they told us the past is over.
Now we are floating smudges of colour
flying high over the mountain barrier.
...

5.
GONE

We have long journeys in our blood.
The road has no end.
The lanes and streets are lined in my eyes,
the horizon burns in my head.
At night we sleep with guns and gulls
tugging at land and oceans,
and ropes coiled to barren rock
where once flowers were to seed
pumping blood, and singing voices.

How would anyone know what we have tried to do,
when there was me, and you,
and there was the burnt black hill
monumental with the faces of our people,
until the next moonrise showed us
something about change,
and the existence of dreams.

The steep hillside is a hard place.
There is nowhere to rest our feet
even when I want to kneel and pray,
moved to tears by a rainbow sky.

What is felt
left unsaid,
is a sadness.
Bereft of our symbols
this strange tattoo in my heart
is the sound of footsteps.

I know the clouds are hiding behind your eyes
even as you kiss my brow,
but this is the way that was promised us
the day we met ten thousand messengers
carrying the whispers of the world.
...

6.
REMEMBRANCE

Why did we think it was trivial
that it would rain every summer,
that nights would be still with sleep
and that the green fern would uncurl
ceaselessly, by the roadside.

Why did we think survival was simple,
That river and field would stand forever
invulnerable, even to the dreams of strangers,
for we knew where the sun lay resting
in the folded silence of the hills.

This summer it rains more than ever.
The footfall of soldiers is drowned and scattered.
In the hidden exchange of news we hear
that weapons are multiplying in the forest.

The jungle is a big eater,
hiding terror in carnivorous green.

Why did we think gods would survive
deathless in memory,
in trees and stones and the sleep of babies;
now, when we close our eyes
and cease to believe, god dies.

For as long as remembrance
men stared at fire and water.

We dwell in the mountains and do not know
what the world hears about us.
Foragers for a destiny,
all the days of our lives
we stare at the outline of the hills,
lifting our eyes to the invincible sky.
...

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