1. No place exists that will not fall to the enemy No epidemic exists that is not terrifying No, there exists another plague far worse than this one
2. ‘The good and bad dying indiscriminately’ [1] Anguished cries everywhere, we swallow the salt of our overflowing tears
3. Like wild grasses, no, like garlic chives [2] cut by the curved blades of one plague and another with unparalleled swiftness, without sound, without rest
4. Some are saving others’ lives Some pray to their own gods Some people continue doing evil, greater evil
5. East, west, south, north — the epidemic, tumultuous and unpredictable My heart fills with worry, only the paper-white narcissus brought with the embrace of a beautiful woman still stand [3]
6. It’s New Year’s Eve, we put on face masks and drive around the capital we pass by Xinhua Gate flanked with red walls [4] I cannot breathe
7. I hadn’t read the Vajra Armor Mantra before [5] Now, I’m on my ninth day of reading it 108 times a day My reading more and more fluent, my heart more and more reliant on it
8. I face this dharmapāla standing on a black pig I notice the black pig’s nine heads look like a nine-headed bird [6] Flames spew from its eyes, its mouth opens wide
9. Bodhisattvas respect causation, ordinary beings respect effects [7] However, there is nothing this enormous animal farm respects This lunar new year there is no need to set off fireworks [8]
10. You gradually see how ‘its waters seethe and boil, all kinds of evil Men and women… fought over and consumed by this evil … its forms so diverse, you dare not look at it for long.’ [9]
***
Part Two
1. For the moment, it appears not to loathe Tibetans not to loathe Uyghurs But to be Wuhanese has become a label to avoid at all costs
2. An infected fugitive boarded a train in Wuhan and headed straight to Lhasa he will be remembered by the name ‘Zhang Moumou’ [10]
3. Surrounded on all sides by the enemy it is absurd to describe Tibet as a pure land in the final analysis ‘the whole country is red’ [11]
4. The official declaration of zero new infections is suspicious A political Shangri-La does not exist but repeating something one hundred times will cover the truth
5. The monasteries are closed, the palaces are closed the taverns are closed, the restaurants are closed… even the sweet teahouses where the locals go every day are closed
6. I heard all the tsampa was looted [12] If even in Lhasa, the self-sustaining tsampa was looted over and over, is there any metaphor more sorrowful than this?
7. Suddenly, the space in front of the Jokhang is empty Has there been any time in history that has extinguished in such silence ‘… people have not the slightest fortune or ethics they can trust’ [13]
8. I don’t mean to be angry with anyone, but how could Dawu [14] a city so remote, a city lacking medical treatment and medicine, become a center of the pandemic? This cannot be explained by karma alone
9. Suddenly snowflakes swirl, allowing window-held me to glimpse at great distance a girl who suffers from sleepwalking being led home by her father through the snow-bound streets of Dawu
10. This year, Losar seems to be later than in other years [15] And having survived the pandemic, with a pinch of tsampa we expel the virus from the human world. [16]
***
Part Three
1. Doors closed for ten days, on a rare day of good weather we head to the countryside everywhere is deserted, the intersections blocked by men and women wearing red armbands: ‘Go back from whence you came!’
2. The paper-whites that grew taller and taller, so lush and fragrant they’d already become a satire against the present reality suddenly collapse, as if overcome by fear
3. The cats those people dropped from great heights The dogs those people buried alive The bats, the monkeys, the pangolins served at the dinner table
4. A Chinese scholar finds a record of a Taoist God of Five Pestilences [17] My family, while counting days of the Tibetan calendar finds a prophesy of a plague in the year of the Iron Rat
5. They actually cannot stop even in these times, They extend their black hands toward my old friends and new acquaintances: ‘The way you talk about the plague is inappropriate.’
6. Preventing speech is more important than preventing the plague In no uncertain terms, they told me I was not to speak of the following: the Dalai Lama, Hong Kong, the pandemic, and the country of the giant infants [18]
7. What kind of vicious circle is this? Infected with a virus, they scramble over each other to obey the virus and then infect their fellow citizens, misfortune spreading to the four seas
8. We are all brought under control under one roof We have lost our voice and our tears our lives trapped in chaos
9. It’s like the surface of a scab has fallen off exposing a scar that cannot heal, and this is the essence of all plagues, which no medicine can cure
10. People, no, all living things — how long have you suffered each in your respective way? How long have you survived these so-called outbreaks? How much time is left?
***
Part Four
1. Previous plagues that crossed the oceans were colonial reinforcements to annihilate indigenous peoples the Maya, who were almost wiped out, called smallpox the Great Fire
2. Without immunity and caught off guard It spreads throughout the world with the speed of a prairie fire A limitless war, murderous and galloping
3. ‘Look, there are more and more predators Congratulations, gluttons, on your good appetites’ [19] Congratulations, for what you’ve chosen from the menu
4. If we say this plague is a metaphor of something bigger perhaps the lives of all people have been firmly captured and how will it ever be willing to let them go?
5. Please don’t fabricate an illusion out of lies concealing previous disasters and this current one concealing the slaughter of countless innocent people
6. A poison arrow has been shot into the karma-carrying body, a target in the wilderness, howling wind, the arrow pierces the bullseye, no one can hide
7. An insatiable, winged insect plummets into a cup of wine offered to the dharmapālas and, in its effort to escape, obtains permission for reincarnation
8. The pennant streaming across the walls of Shelkar Chöde [20] painted as though the wind were blowing it in waves Is that the pure wind from snow-shrouded Everest?
9. ‘A boil with a human face, a terrible grievance from ancient times erased with one scoop of clear spring water, take pity on yourself as you would on others’ [21] I sincerely love the ancient Chinese word ‘repentance’ [22]
10. When I read this haiku I started to cry: ‘In the wind, I loudly pray: Namo Guanshiyin Pusa’[23] Please release the souls, lost, packed into the bardo … [24]
— February-March 2020, Beijing
***
Photograph courtesy of Tsering Woeser
***
Notes:
These notes incorporate material both by the poet and the translator. Woeser’s original notes are marked (W) and those of Ian Boyden (I). Co-authored material is indicated by (W/I).
[1] This is passage from The History of the Peloponnesian War (trans. Rex Warner) attributed to the Athenian historian Thucydides, who described in vivid detail the Plague of Athens in 430 BCE. This plague is thought to have been an outbreak of smallpox that originated in Ethiopia spreading to Greece via Egypt and Libya. It ultimately killed around a quarter of the population of Athens. See also Donald R. Hopkins, The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History (University of Chicago Press, 2002). (W/I)
[2] ‘Garlic chives’ 韭菜, a popular Internet term, refers to the masses of people who have been repeatedly exploited by those in power. Garlic chives can be harvested repeatedly and always sprout again after having been cut back. (W/I) [Ed.: for more on ‘garlic chives’, see Xu Zhangrun 許章潤, ‘Viral Alarm — When Fury Overcomes Fear’, China Heritage, 24 February 2020]
[3] Prior to the Lunar New Year, a Tibetan friend brought me a bunch of paper-white narcissus bulbs. During the epidemic, they grew and flowered exuberantly. They became a source of considerable comfort. (W)
[4] Xinhua Gate located on Chang’an Avenue in Beijing is the main, south-facing entrance of Zhongnanhai, the Lake Palaces, which have been the headquarters of the central government and the Communist Party since 1949. The gate is flanked by two vermillion walls inscribed with slogans that read ‘Long live the Great Chinese Communist Party’ and ‘Long live ever-victorious Mao Zedong Thought’. (W/I)
[5] The Vajra Armor Mantra is also known as The Dorje Gotrab Mantra. Dorje Gotrab རྡོ་རྗེ་ཁོ་ཁྲབ་ is a dharmapāla, or ‘dharma protector’, and his mantra, when recited, is thought to cure various illnesses. According to tradition, the mantra was written by the sage Padmasambhava and revealed by Tertön Dorje Lingpa (1346–1405). Dorje Gotrab is usually depicted as a fierce warrior wielding an instrument of the dharma while standing on a nine-faced iron pig. (W/I)
[6] A famous proverb says that ‘In the sky there is a nine-headed bird, on the ground there’s a fellow from Hubei’. It is used as a metaphor to describe the shrewdness of people from Hubei province. (W)
[7] ‘Bodhisattvas respect causation, ordinary beings respect effects’ 菩薩畏因，眾生畏果. This is often-repeated phrase exhorts people to think about the chain of cause and effect and to concentrate on eliminating the causes of suffering rather than focusing on suffering itself. In this stanza, Woeser plays on the meanings of 畏 wèi. Wèi can mean ‘fear’, but it also akin to ‘treat with awe’ or ‘respect’, ‘be attentive or alert to’, or, indeed, ‘to be cautious about’. Woeser then locates this ambiguous term in the context of the machinations of the Chinese party-state by invoking the image of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The rulers lack a sense of wèi. Thus the line could also be read as meaning: ‘Bodhisattvas are attentive to causation, ordinary beings fear consequences, however, there is nothing this enormous animal farm respects.’ (I)
[8] The Lunar New Year in 2020, or Spring Festival, was on the 25th of January. Known as ‘Spring Festival Migration’ 春運 it is the busiest travel season in the Chinese calendar. Due to the health crisis, the country was effectively shut down to halt the spread of the coronavirus. (W/I)
[9] This is a quotation from the opening chapter of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva Pūrvapraṇidhāna Sūtra which is titled ‘Spiritual Penetrations in the Palace of the Trayastrimsha Heaven’. Kṣitigarbha is celebrated for a great many things, one of which is his skill at freeing souls from hell (see also the note at the end of the conversation above). (W/I)
[10] Zhang Moumou 張某某, literally ‘Someone called Zhang’ is a term used to indicate a person infected with the ‘Wuhan Influenza’. Here Zhang Moumou is akin to the American term ‘John Doe’. This unknown individual left Wuhan before it was sealed off and travelled to Lhasa. The following day, 25 January 2020, he was hospitalised. After he was discharged on 13 February he left Lhasa. To date, officially, this Zhang is the only confirmed case of coronavirus in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. (W)
[11] This is an expression coined by Mao Zedong that became famous during the Cultural Revolution when, in 1968, it was printed on a postage stamp which included a map of the People’s Republic that did not include the ‘rogue province’ of Taiwan. (I)
[12] Tsampa is a staple of the Tibetan diet. It is usually made by mixing roasted barley flour with butter tea to form a dough or thick porridge. Tsampa also has a political significance as it is used as a metonym for Tibetan unity, thus it is also associated with Tibetan autonomy and independence. (I)
[13] This is from a biography of Padmasambava called the The Pema Kathang པདྨ་བཀའ་ཐང་. It was written c.1352 by Tertön Orgyen Lingpa (ཨོ་རྒྱན་གླིང་པ་, b.1323). It contains a prophecy:
‘There will be those who do evil, but blame it on the evil of the times. The times will not have changed, it is simply that the human heart is sinister. In those times, people will have not the slightest fortune or ethics they can trust.’ (W/I)
[14] At the time of writing, Dawu རྟའུ་རྫོང་། in the Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, had seventy-four confirmed cases of Wuhan pneumonia. It was the most severely infected area in Tibet. I lived there as a child and I have been particularly concerned about the coronavirus outbreak there. (W)
[15] Losar ལོ་གསར་ is the Tibetan New Year. In previous years, it has fallen somewhere between 29 December and 16 January 16. In 2020, however, Losar was on 22 February. (W)
[16] The ‘expelling of evil spirits’ is a customary ritual during the Tibetan New Year in which tsampa or wheat flour dough is fashioned into a devil and an exorcism performed. (W)
[17] The five ‘plague messengers’ or gods are called Spring Plague, Summer Plague, Autumn Plague, Winter Plague and the Middle Plague. (W)
[18] In this line, ‘Hong Kong’ refers to the ongoing mass protests in 2019 sparked by the proposed legislation to allow for the extradition of Hong Kong citizens to the Mainland of the People’s Republic. The ‘country of the giant infants’ refers to contemporary China; ‘giant infants’ 巨嬰 is a metaphor for immature adults. (W) [Ed.: For more details on China as a ‘Giant Infant Country’, see: Lee Yee 李怡 & To Kit 陶傑, ‘China, The Man-Child of Asia’, China Heritage, 26 September 2019]
[19] These lines are from my poem ‘Why Must All Things be Domesticated?’ (September 2018). Here the term for glutton is taotie 饕餮, a fierce creature depicted on many Shang and Zhou dynasty bronzes. (W/I)
[20] Shelkar Chöde Monastery is located in Dingri county, Western Tibet. It belongs to the Geluk-pa or ‘Yellow Hat’ School of Tibetan Buddhism. (W)
[21] From The Compassionate Waters Repentance Ritual by Master Wu Da (悟達國師, 811-883) of the Tang dynasty. The text contains a well-known story in which a painful boil with a human face reveals a chain of causation to a Buddhist priest. (W/I)
[22] ‘Repentance’ 懺悔 chànhuǐ, the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit pāpadeśanā and Tibetan sdig pa bshags pa is a term that frequently appears in Mahayana Buddhist texts. (I)
[23] This haiku is by the Japanese Soto Zen priest Taneda Santōka (種田山頭火, 1882-1940). It was translated into Chinese by Gao Haiyang and published in Remaining Slowly Cooked Rice: 300 Haiku by Taneda Santōka (Hunan Arts and Literature Press, 2019). In Woeser’s poem, I have translated the Chinese version of this poem so as to convey the sentiment that had particular touched Woeser. My interpretation of the original haiku, however, is somewhat different from Gao Haiyang’s Chinese version. The original haiku reads: 風の中聲はりあげて南無観音菩薩, that is, ‘Voice rises/ into the wind/ Namu Kanzeon Bosatsu.’ The act of prayer is implicit in the final line, ‘Namu Kanzeon Bosatsu’, which is a common Buddhist chant meaning ‘I bow to (hail or, take refuge in) the Bodhisattva Who Hears the Worlds’ Cries.’ But the first two lines present a subtle image. The word ‘voice’ 聲 koe — most possibly refers to the poet’s voice, although it could also be that of another person, or even that of the reader, one that rises in the form of a prayer or invocation uttered in the wind. It is a voice rising softly to meet the intensity of the wind. Here there is no sense that it is fighting the wind, or that the voice is strident. The ‘voice’ is simply rising up into the wind and becoming one with the wind. The strength of the wind depends on the reader’s imagination. Here, wind may be taken as a metaphor human existence, or, alternatively, it can simply just be the wind. My thanks to my friend Jocelyn for helping me think through the meaning of the Japanese original. (W/I) [Ed.: Kanzeon, or Guanshiyin 觀世音, is known as Chenrezig in Tibetan and Avalokiteśvara अवलोकितेश्वर in Sanskrit. The Dalai Lama is regarded as being the incarnation of Chenrezig, who is also the patron deity of Tibet.]
[24] In Tibetan Buddhism, there are many kinds of bardo བར་དོ་, one of which is the liminal space/time between lives known as chönyi bardo (chos nyid bar do), or ‘the bardo of suchness’, or unconditioned truth. When a person dies their spirit wanders in the chönyi bardo before being reborn. What happens in that bardo is subject to considerable debate, although it is generally agreed that during the soul’s sojourn there it experiences both great possibility and terrifying hallucinations. During the 2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic, when so many people are dying, it is easy to imagine the new wandering souls in chönyi bardo. Here Woeser is appealing for their quick rebirth. The concept of bardo can also be taken as a metaphor for any period during which normal life is disrupted. (I)
— February–March 2020, Beijing
Art work by Tomoyo Ihaya. Courtesy of Tsering Woeser
