The Spider of Yabzhi Taktser By Woeser

http://highpeakspureearth.com/2017/poem-the-spider-of-yabzhi-taktser-by-woeser/



Translation by Ian Boyden



That afternoon the savage light
fell on ordinary, worldly faces,
the faces golden
as if stone were turned to gold,
transformed into unusual treasure.

We walked Jiangsu Road . Yes,
the Jiangsu Road in the southern part of Lhasa.
The road’s name is a violation that does not belong here—
you understand?
Although I am older than my two friends,
I’m an acha  who’s a full head shorter.
We spoke Tibetan, Chinese, and English,
although I only speak Chinese and Tibetan.
We were followed, I don’t know by who or how many.
They were like tails we couldn’t shake loose.
They stood there on the corners,
their eyes like cunning rats,
with their tiny swallowed hearts,
such trembling, wretched obsequious worms.
And there in the shadows of the roadside trees
people milled about outside of shops
their faces void of light
discussing business
riddled with anxiety.

We walked through Central Beijing Road ,
this holy city so long ago embedded with foreign names.
Each name is like its own occupation—one after another,
everyone’s grown so accustomed to them,
no one knows to think the names are strange.
Sunshine, ah, golden sunshine,
our warm shadows fell long across the colorful floor tiles.
Surveillance cameras everywhere
hung in the high places
their eyes fell upon our bodies
on everyone’s bodies—
it seemed our backs grew cold.
Even so, I didn’t want to turn my head to look.
I didn’t want to stop,
I just wanted to keep going forward
and so we walked with long strides.
We grinned and laughed—
we were so handsome
cherishing this moment of apparent freedom
and together we sighed the slogan of the oppressor
“So Happy and Blessed!”

Go straight, then turn right—
how many times have I returned to visit Yabzhi Takster?
This mansion which carries the family name of His Holiness
was built more than sixty years ago, half of it already in ruins.
However, I don’t want to retell history—
the earliest happy gathering,
the rapid tumble to impermanence
after being forced to abandon it,
the tears they shed while leaving.
Those who occupied it were outsiders
who wore green clothes, blue clothes,
outsiders reincarnated as hungry ghosts,
reincarnated as hermit crabs occupying the shell of another.
Today, the ancient orchards and gardens
have become a parking lot
a Sichuan restaurant
a shopping mall.
Many parts of the main building
and the outer courtyards have collapsed,
almost no windows still intact.

We stood on the roof of a nearby market
and looked down.
I was astonished at this huge wound that cannot be healed
astonished to see the mansion was so close to the Phodrang Potala
—so close, so close.

I harbored tears filled with self-criticism:
I’m an incapable, powerless waste.

We walked into the empty wilderness of the outer courtyard
half-filled with weeds and wildflowers,
half-filled with bicycles and motorcycles.
A senseless warehouse.
A man and woman who seemed like workers
passed by carrying plastic bags.
Four or five tall, lacquer-black mastiffs
were chained in a corner downstairs
their eyes of desperation.
They could only show their sharp teeth,
could only utter futile barks.
They belonged to the owner of a nearby Sichuan restaurant
who was waiting to sell them at a good price.
A few days later when we snuck in again
we ran into him as he came to feed them.
He assumed the posture of the owner
but his bluff to expel us had no effect.
He called a man wearing a security uniform—a Tibetan—
to rid the place of us.
But I asked him in Tibetan, “Who is the real owner of this place?”
My question rendered him helpless,
na, na, unable to form a sentence.

Walking up the stairs from the garbage-strewn ground floor
we held our breath as we passed
through a winding corridor crosshatched with cracks.
A few rows of iron railings purchased from India
had bloomed rust but were still sturdy,
their consecutive patterns of sunlight and shadow
framing an unknowable maze like a foreign country.
We leaned on a railing and looked around.
The original white walls were mottled,
the black window frames had split apart,
the ends of the eaves were carved
with sacred animals, magic clouds, and lotus flowers.
Rotten wood strained
to support the structure of the mansion
and in a dark hall lined with ten or so columns
several shabby tables and chairs were scattered about,
discarded by the last people who left.
A few beams of light
fell obliquely from a clear story
through flying dust, flickering phantoms
as if they were monks wearing masks slowly performing Cham
I noticed a window to the northwest
through this opening lined with blades of glass
I could perfectly see the Phodrang Potala
and it seemed like I was looking into the past,
and saw, within all the worry and grief
of the first years of the occupation,
the commitment of the Venerable Youth .
I turned from this only to be shocked again
by a broken mirror hanging from a pillar.
I hung there, reflected as a helpless Self
carrying an expression
of the desire to hide from the world.
I didn’t dare get closer,
I was scared I might catch a glimpse of a singular shadow
fleeing in a panic in the middle of the night,
1959.
I was scared I might hear His Holiness
who has passed most of his life in foreign countries,
might hear him whisper:
“Your home, your friends, your country—suddenly lost…”

Is it possible
I lived here in a previous life?
That I endured all the parting?
Is it possible
in the past I was in so much pain
I did not want to live,
yet exhausted my mind just to survive?
Unexpectedly there rose the desire to escape
but still I lingered in this room filled with vestigial traces:
the walls covered with old portraits of popular Hong Kong stars,
a front page of Tibet Daily from over twenty years ago
covering news of the 14th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party,
a completely shredded print of the Potala Palace,
Chinese characters pasted to some of the doors
reading “Blessing” and “Great Prosperity in the New Year.”
Another door carried the Chinese word “Office” written in red lacquer
and pasted to yet another door, a deathly pale seal:
Petition presented on January 5, 2005…
And a long-bearded Chinese door god,
his right hand holding a pagoda,
his left hand lifting an iron hammer.
In one nook there was a goat skull with a pair of empty eyes
its two burned horns curling out
as if in the past it were desperate for help.
In another nook, the original arkar floor was gone
and from the cracks there grew small blades of grass
full of life.
In another spot, a chunk of wood the size of your hand—
which must have been a gorgeous column cap that fell long ago:
the paint still there
the carving still there.
It was the essence of this ancient house—
I quietly slipped it into my backpack.

A single piece of turquoise hangs from my neck
it is my secret guide
that led me to the destiny of my next encounter:

Dom!

Hanging outside a broken window
and floating dangerously in midair,
dom, a spider trapped in threads it spit out itself,
floated on a web so thin it could almost not be seen.
It had already become a mummy
looking into the abyss,
into a section of tragic collapse.
Was it the only dead bit of life here?
Was it the only existing guardian here?
Had it overestimated its own position?
Had it wanted to capture these invincible demons?

Hanging in front of my eyes, the spider was another mirror,
its lacquer-black carapace glimmering in the traitorous light.
Through some kind of struggle, it had become a metaphor.
I dared not touch it, afraid that in that instant
it might disappear.

I think back to those years.
This symbolic animal must not have been the only one of its kind,
and there must have been the host’s house pets too—
there must have been cats and mice
and dogs, the special Lhasa apso, running back and forth
from the Buddha hall to the living room and the bedrooms
perhaps peacefully falling asleep.
And surely a big dog too?
I mean a mastiff from the grasslands.
He would have stayed in the yard with the gatekeeper,
stood at the entrance of the main gate—loyal, devoted, invincible.

Dom—this is how one says “spider” in Tibetan
the m soft, almost non-existent.

Domthag—this is how one says “spider web”
the m subtle as if it were being swallowed.

Compared with other lifeforms
the spider’s vitality is perhaps more tenacious:
it is easier for it to hide itself in another place and survive.
And yet it is also easier for the spider to die alone
in a violent, unnatural death that goes unreported.

This spider, “born like a fortress to imprison enemies,”
wove the world into a lifetime of web,
bound by and to itself,
unable to extricate itself from its own threads—

just like us
and our unfathomable fate.

Woeser
Beijing
July 31 – August 3, 2017

Translated by Ian Boyden
San Juan Island
September 19, 2017

Translator’s note: This is poem of extraordinary scale and complexity. I called on many of my friends to help me figure out how to render it into English. My deepest thanks to Rong Sun, Dechen Pemba, Jim Canary, Jennifer Boyden, and Sam Hamill for their insights and suggestions. And my great gratitude to Woeser for her patience with my many questions as I worked to understand the poem as completely as I possibly could.