Bleeding Snow Poem by Tenzin Tsewang

My gods are not defeated
They are only quiet,
Waiting between two breaths.

Our mountain is dotted with names
Foreign to our tongue,
Forced to forget herself.
Though she is scarred, her snow
Bleeding into stone,
She remains unbowed
A jagged dare against the sky.

They claim our land was empty,
But empty hearts do not sing.
Our ancestors danced on ice sheets,
Chiseled fortresses from living rock,
And breathed the dry winds
That scrape the lungs like flint.

The hot wind of exile
Pierces the marrow,
Igniting a restless pain.
Foreign greetings crowd the air
A fog of borrowed sounds
Until no direction can be trusted.

We move like yaks
Stubborn, heavy, undefeated.
Our gods watch:
Silent, deathless.
Pala said, 'We are like them
Thriving in thin air
Where others choke.'
Our anger and prayer are braided,
A knot that refuses erasure.

If they call this defeat,
They do not know us.
They do not know the altitude
Of our spirit,
The depth of our long winter.

We wait for spring.
We wait for the mountain
To speak her name again.
Our gods will rise
From the silence..