Galsan Tschinag
Beyond the Silence
Translated by
From Galsan Tschinag, Jenseits
des Schweigens
(Frauenfeld, Switzerland: Waldgut Verlag, 2006)
Return to: The Poetry of Galsan Tschinag
Game of Fate
The pouch of fate
No doubt resembles
A third stomach
Whose slimy-rotting cud
You were trying to pick clean
It kept us hidden from each other
In its clever creases
For so long and only
In an hour of laxness
Set us both free
Seeing you
Faithfully squat
In the darkening hut and busily
Pluck at the steaming goo
As at the slippery seam of salvation
I try to weigh
What our common campfire
Mattered and whether
It might stand up to the invading
Storm of winter
Milky Way
Milky Way in view and
Mother in mind
I send out wishes
In every direction
Bright, soft and warm
Continuation
Of an interrupted deed
Morning after morning
The pudgy, weasel-quick woman
Ceremoniously arrayed and erect
Stepped up to the incense column
With the milk bucket in her left hand
And the juniper-root spoon with thirteen slits
In her right
Sprinkling the udder-warm milk
To sun, mountain, steppe and river
Showers accompanied
By rhyming couplets that often
Grew long and passionate
At evening we saw on high the traces of what
Had happened here on earth that morning:
The Milky Way
Still flowing along
Just a touch grander
Annunciation
I will be coming
But for now I send
These words before me
The settled dust
Of my spirit
So that
Warm as souls
It can meet the flighty ovum
From your innermost nest
And fertilize it
For the time has come
For you and me
To have our child
And may it be
As the children of others
Round and warm as a heart
Soft and solid as kidneys!
Words of Gratitude from a Threatened Man
Now rising
Now subsiding
Your fire-breathing
Hydrophobic pulse
Beats along with me
As I live beyond
Mountains and steppes
And whether it throbs, whether it whispers
I always accept it
With precision and gratitude
With all my
Senses
Sharpened by desire
Tempered by abstinence
The blood from your heart
Runs through my veins
In the attempt
To keep a body long surrounded
By marauders of every kind
From giving way
To destruction
Lines from the Sky
We unwind degrees of latitude
At both ends
And hurry towards each other
Me on wings
You on wheels
And the place we meet
Will hang somewhere
Between sky and earth
Just where the travel-weary dreams
Land for now
Will we, two dreams
Of whatever substances ourselves
Drop away?
Or united as one
Rise up anew to the stars?
11/16/2003, in the sky from
To the Nomad Boy Who Had to Learn How to Use Eating Utensils
From the quarry of time I knock off nuggets
Strip them down to years and months,
Peel away the days and hours
And the youth who stamped them into the pit, the stone
On his way to hill, the red-cheeked
Nomad boy, comes to light, wakes
And stands, trembling and sweating
Invisible to outsiders, next to me.
I, the hill
Now closer to mountain than stone for years
Jut out protectively over him
I father, grandfather
Of my own being, dwell in the
Front room and at the festive tables
Of the continents I have conquered
And know how
To break open so many hard shells
To take out the fruit
And to get drunk
On its sweet-bitter flesh
Yes, my boy
You were a sinless sinner
Who had to endure the pains of hell
In a world that knew not what it did
Now comes my late revenge
For you against the scars
By implementing everything to pieces
Knifing and forking eggs, cake and pudding
And brashly announcing my readiness
Before the rolling camera to crack
Nuts with those extended metal fingers
But then with my hands and mouth
I work as if in my own yurt
Grabbing here, ripping and biting there
And then licking and smacking my lips
Don't be shocked, my child
Since you were not permitted this and would
Have quickly been sneered at
Wild man me
is now permitted
Even to force out words
That serve my dignity
Ah yes, such was the world created
Into which you ventured out
And to which you relinquished
Your youth as tuition in the
Heady hope of one day being granted
The crown of King.
Berlin-Bad Lippspringe 11/19-22/2003
Morning Sun on December 5th
Per Maria di Merano
Lovely, when in December
Over snowy woods and fields
The sun blossoms to life like summer
Here and there splintering off in sparks
Now and then breaking out in flames
And pouring out intensified, purified light
Along the paths and passageways
That you and I
Wandered up and down
In blazing consciousness of so much life
And such solid human harmony
Twice as lovely to know
The sun-fire will
Track down and tie together
The dizzying dash of two pairs of footprints
To set their wavering paths ablaze
So that the wetness trapped in ice
Might finally rise up
Returning
To breath-warm, tear-bright water
Seeping
Into soil joyful to conceive
Loveliest of all
If on a May morning
A deer child or a human fawn
Agitated in the brimming chalice
Of a young and modest heart
Were to stand still
Right in front of a footprint nest's occupant
The sky-blue forget-me-not
And were to recognize its illuminated gaze
It is one of the endowments
We granted and left behind
For all animated life forms
And now the recipient
Comes face to face with one of them
12/5/2003, Michelangelo Express, Bolzano-Munich
Novemberliness
Fog pressing down
Rain drizzling
So novemberly
Here and there bent
Treelike beings
Weep
Oily-carboniferous tears
From eyes unseeing
Under heavy lashes
I, novembering along
Through inner countrysides, know
The sources of unseeing and unfeeling
The souls that slipped away
When their bodies
Damned to achievement
Were beaten black and blue
Now form after form
Comes into view and swells up madly
Strangling viscous and superfluous
Mucus shapes out of its own innards
I who had
My outer layer polished
To hasten through the day
Might here and there
Take hold of one of the oppressed
And whisper to him
You still have it better, my friend
Than many others on the treadmill
In this labyrinth of delusion
You may show yourself
As you are
You are permitted to weep and do
Not have to play a role.
November 2002, 11/19-20/2003,
Reporting on the Situation
The breast hills
Over which the wind
Of many winters stumbled
Drift my way, staring at me
In the firelight
Of the sinking sun
With the weight
Of developing mountains
Rising up to my full height
I present myself and sense
Peace in me, surrounded
By bright coolness
Of the glacier's peak at my back
And I recognize the situation
I a mountain
Stand tenaciously
In the cross storm
Of jealousy and greed
And of their misbegotten child
Blind hate
A terrestrial formation myself
I watch
With celestial circumspection
While stones fly at me
And I do not forget
To suffer proper pains
When they beat
Against me
Zagaan sar in the Year of the Red Mouse, 2/19-25/1996;
1/7/2004
Song of the Hedgehog
Laming
The winter cold
Taming
The daily burden
Claws gape open
Threatening to snap shut
Your prince
With his family seat
At the altar of bliss
Is forced
To flee
From the skin of a child
Into that of a work ox
And to curl up into a ball
Like a hedgehog that will stay
Until you appear
To release him
Spring
Cemetery of the Altai
The last larch
At the foot of the eagle's nest
Has fallen
Now this side valley of the Altai
Lies stark naked in the path
Of sand- and snowstorms
Perfectly resembling
A cemetery
Tree stumps
Jut out silently
Like shadows, gravestones
Burden
Tear has its taste
Mourning its look
Parting its language
Knowing
That the wound-etched
Blinded and
Mute are beside me
I don't know
What to do
Oppressed with weight
The invisible sack
With foreign burdens
The shoulders
A Line of Farewell
What use are words anymore?
The threads have long since
Pulled loose
It is not given
To you or me
To re-knit
The pattern from our
Aches and joys
Here apart, there together
Let the carpet, once woven
Stay as it is
Allow the bed linens of love
The honor
Of becoming a burial shroud
Of separation
That Early Autumn Day
That fluttering ribbon
Of an early autumn day
Striped pink at the one end
Spattered red at the other
Blue yellow white in the middle
And from hour to hour
In a richer light
Of sun storm behind
The bursting clouds
Constantly a new
Riveting bounty
You and I sat
Wedged into each other, silent
And so we left time
For our senses to be
Alert all the way to their edges
And to blaze wide awake
In the face of a portrait
Painting itself
And framing itself
Within the flaming horizons
Pilgrims
Two pilgrims, each
On a quest toward himself
The sensed unknown
Meet again and again
Halfway
Each serves as a skylight
To the goal for the other
The view leads
To meditation or embarrassment
Creating a dilemma:
A communal stretch
Or each continues his pilgrimage alone
Short old woman
Tall wise man
Earth- and weather-beaten you walk
Dwarfish yet mountainous
With composure into the raging snowstorm
Of the winter steppe
Your face is a landscape
Carved with dark furrows
And charted by adventures
That still glow
Your fingers are roots
Washed and peeled
And in your look
Lives wisdom, gentle and clear
At the spot where you arrived
The winds of fate have
Quieted
Habit
Habit advances quietly
Softly seizes and firmly pulls the opening shut
Too late you notice
It has taken command
Useless to try rebelling
Against it, for
You've long since been walled
Into a hollow with no exit
Or else you stand walled
Out in front of your birth house
With no entrance now
Lullaby to Those Developing
Grow, sprout, grow
To a tall larch
But know
The storm always strikes
The tallest tree in the woods
Grow, stone, grow
To a hill, to a mountain
But know
Up there on the peak
Dwell cold and loneliness
Grow, child, grow
To a strong man
But know
Such strength is constantly
Attended by jealousy and hate
Beyond the Silence
Beyond the silence
That we monitor
A voice will speak
Beyond the darkness
That encircles us
A light will shimmer
Beyond the rot
That decomposes us
A body will generate
Beyond the emptiness
That fills us
A soul will hover
Beyond the numbness
That subdues us
A spirit will gleam
Someone named this existence
Defying every ending
And beyond all nothings
God
Another did not dare
To encumber
The majestic unknown
With a self-proclaimed
Inexact designation
Barbs
Be kind to yourself
Protect yourself at least
From your own barbs
Aren't there enough
People out there already
Who crave the chance
To hurt you?
Words
We talk too much
Keep silent too little
Plummeting hailstorm words
Bounce apart
In a search for grooves
And find a bed
Now and again
Through which
A stream will force its way
Rushing and frothing
But which needs
A silent lake
Into which it can flow
Mountains and Stars
Night makes a nest
In the cozy imprint
Of the dissipated day
Mountains and stars
Equally close and equally peaceful
Shine and breathe on you
With their blazing
Ineradicable memory
And you, pulsing particle
Of the burbling whole
Ride the arrow of time
From tomorrow to yesterday
You rest in the present day to personify
Animate and spiritualize it
Growing at the same time
Speck of dust by speck of dust yourself
To a mountain, to a star
Morning Greeting in All Directions
Greetings, man
Who lives next door or beyond the mountains
And steppes and rivers and lakes
No matter where you are, who you are
Whatever hair or skin color you have
Whether you know me or not
Greetings
A new morning is gathering
Possibly, things where you are
Are not so far along, and you're resting
Surrounded by darkness, but
The light messenger of life's day
Left to visit you long ago and
So he will still come to the place you are
A further gift
But we, too, are gifts to the arriving messenger
Or to whoever fathered him, shaped him
And sent him on his way:
Each a burning torch
A costume of life, patience, gratitude
Along the way
Which, without us, without everyone and everything
Would be so senseless and hopeless
The breaking day can be anything
A bitch pregnant to bursting
For instance.Then she will
Deliver pups before our eyes
Maybe a litter of twelve. It's up
To you and me whether we know
How to receive each of them
And above all how to raise them: as dogs?
As mutts? As monsters?
Mine will become sheep-dogs
With the tent of heaven as their roof
Barking communal complaints and sniffing the wind
Winds themselves, storm winds
In the way of all wolves
Mostly peaceable, but not tame
You will raise your own
As your senses dictate: as lap- or
Yard dogs. Or as attack dogs. The kind
With lips pulled back, teeth bared
And icy-murderous looks, I cringe!
They aren't kept to protect against wolves
I know. But still I beg you
Not to sic any of them on me
Or on any other child of man
I beg you in the name of the mother of all mothers
Who was perhaps a bitch as well
And her pups, your ancestors and mine
Delivered here and there. Or a blade of grass
Whose seeds the wind scattered across the earth
I am always afraid of the attack dog
No matter where he is. But I'm never afraid
Of you, man, wherever you live, whoever you are
And whatever hair and skin color you have
The
At last I land again
On your stony shore
You receive me
As in the pale first hour
Of my little existence
Still so motherly
Mother mother
You keep that soft lap
Open for me, the lap that
Rocked me, oh, so caringly
I, a little leaf on
The whirlwind of life
Blow away once again
You follow me so childlike
Child child, you flood
Into my burning breast, and
Having extinguished the blaze
You retreat
Into the alcove, set free
By a temporary tear
Cradle of Wisdom
At first glance
The variegated blue mountain steppe
May appear
Naked, scant and cold
It is however
The aromatic, steaming cradle
With enumerated sands and grasses
In which life throbs and
In competition with death
Which is not allowed to rest
It is the great book
That circumscribes history
With its many legends
That sleep
And wisdom
That keeps watch
Pilgrim
Day in day out
Year in year out
Busily
Crawling along
And rolling about
I, man, am
On pilgrimage
Towards myself
Not any nobler
Than a sheep
Nor any lesser
Than a god
I incessantly peel
Myself off inwardly
Stepping across thresholds
Leveling off horizons
And always moving closer
To the numbly raging ocean
Of gentle, glowing darkness
Drink
The cup from which
You drink me
Is the same in which
You served yourself to me
We pour ourselves
Into each other mouthwise
Two streams determined
To produce a river
Capable of flowing the distance and
Capable, before slipping back
Exhausted into the womb
Of bearing the water of life
The sacred three drops:
The first as dew
In the calyx
Of a waking rose
The next as a tear
On the lid
Of an eye dimming with death
And the last as a bonus
To the oceans of earth
Instructions about the Path
For Mielchen
The
Have a kindly disposition
If you wander them
With memory sharpened
And always keep alert
They will tell you
Of the boy
Who twice within three winters
Stepped across
The threshold of the yurt
Beyond the Blue Saddle
Split at first from the outside, and
Since that didn't work
He was allowed to leave again
Later split on the inside, and
With renewed distress
He had to hide
Locked away in a scrap of fur
Only then was he able to grow and prosper
And I came to be*
The cracked, scorched rocks
Will tell you
About cold and heat
While the shaky paths
Relate campaigns of the hero
Of a self-woven epic
And the stones and grasses
Will sing to you
Slimy songs
Of a shaman and shall
Recite spindly verses of a poet
*Translator's note:To understand the autobiographical allusions about the split nature of twin brothers that died, and of the one who received both their spirits, only to be hidden in a fur skin, see the second paragraph of the introduction to the poetry of Galsan Tschinag.
Crate Renters
Swept clean our memories
No yesterday, no today
We dwell by hours
Toward tomorrow
In compartments
Of a crate
Renters
Obligated
By signed contract
To pay the going price --
When our stomach is full
When our senses are numbed --
With currency of a booming heartbeat
But the Steppe has Grasses
For Benjamin
Of course it is bare here
And you have to ride
Two days or three
To the closest woods
But the steppe has grasses
Wishing to be seen
To be noticed and acknowledged
And they are older yet
Than the trees
They have no ambition
Of being considered
Small trees
Grasses are
A long-living lot
Maybe they did once
Have a tree childhood after all
But now they've matured
To wisdom. They know
No grass has to grow
To a tree, just as no tree
Stunts to grass
Grass is grass
Tree is tree
Each grows
Unto itself and
Doesn't run wild
It grows inwardly and outwardly
Grasses are watching and listening
So come on, don't talk nonsense
Stay where you are and
Help yourself. Wisdom is
Everywhere, saturated
With beauty
At Sunset
On the breast hills lies
The hazy red reflection
Of the setting sun
Neither day nor evening
The silken border
Straight through the river of time
The bridge on which
I move from the shore of duty
To the shore of justice
And become aware
Of an ovoo,* round as a nipple
At the tops of many hills
And almost incendiary with blushing
The muscles stretched
The tendons taut
I live, full to the brim with you
*A pile of rocks, usually on mountain passes, used as a place of offering to the local spirit.
Wintry Closeness
Cracks and wrinkles in the earth
Sealed with snow
And fluttering blue-toned light
Flashing to the sky
Conjure up winter's closeness
Except for the water
That divides and dilutes
Everything gathers close
The herds
Planet earth
And our marriage
We can warm ourselves each day and
Each night with each other
Feeling skin to skin that each
Answers the other
With his own language
And two tired, self-directed soliloquies
Finally flow
Into dialogue
At Times of Defeat
At times of defeat
You pour yourself out
Mankind, into a
Bottomless container
Only too ready
To soak up
Any old concoction
Likewise when it's time
To pour out
Your liquefied soul
You meet everyone
Pinched and pouting
Without exception
Head bowed, you carry
Around your weakness
In the downdraft
Of cracking whips, but
Always knowing
No gratitude awaits you
The Nameless Eighth of an Hour
The nameless eighth of an hour
Between day and dew
A milky-white, shaky light
Shrouds the mountain steppe
Hurt and aching along and through
My heart cage, I think
Of the night departing
The words that can
No longer be captured
And the missed intimacy
No sooner have I thought it, I see
The light fading and
Souring, stiffening
Into a lumpy mess of pottage
In Smoke the Fire Lives, Dying
In smoke the fire lives, dying
I know who you once were
Slouching gray man
So many summer evenings
You dashed through the steppe
No doubt believing you could
Catch the day
And move aside the mountain
That was blocking the sun
Night was short for you then
And the day was long
At the same time you put
The inadequate name of youth
In many toothless mouths
But at least you helped
To hold the spinning, round earth
Steady on its axis
On My Way to See You
On my way to see you
I felt doors
Opening inside me
Behind which
One landscape
After the other
Arched toward the sky
And shone
Alert, proud eyes
On my way to see you
I was infinite
Encompassing worlds
Whose destructive force
I trapped and converted
Tamed into mildness
By the power
That chased me to you
Across lands and cities
In this hour of winter night
10/28/1995, Kreuztal, in the Guderhaus
Small Souvenir
The bluing day
Above the tree tips
Is the avenue stretching
Across from you to me
The paling stars
They give us
One final reprieve
The express train will
Arrive on time
And you will
Run to me
Even before I
Reach
The end of the track
Everything will go quickly
But you
Will not recognize
Right away
What I'm bringing you:
Farewell
10/23/1996, Dresden-Bühlau
You Are In Me
You are as you are
In me
You sit inescapably
In the maw
Of memory
You turn, a spindle
Spooling nothing but new yarn
For an endless embroidery
In and out
You grow wild in me
Encasing me in your web
In a race with grass
That pierces
The ground from above
And knots up within
Inescapably
Well protected
My roots reach
To where
The threads of sun
And wind
Tighten
Into a pair
Of vibrating, sonorous strings
Inescapably I am intertwined
With everyone and everything
Watching and living
Tall as a tree above ground
Or resting and brooding
Long as a fallen log in the ground
And thus weaving
The existence of galaxies along
Embraced
By my first, most basic self
I am
Underway
From branch to trunk
From rock to mountain
And will at a bend
In the road once again
Peel myself back down
To stone, to leaf
Come and Burn
Why are you dozing
Unlit, little candle
In the fog hour
Of a dying age?
The evening can
Turn out no better than the day
Night comes last
Who knows
I've been here longer than you
And I've seen
Many autumns gray away
Until in the end I
Grayed away myself
Enter me
Let's stoke each other
For flame in the ashes of time
Maybe we'll succeed
In warming each other
On our little fires
As for me, I'd like to burn out
Before the great fire breaks out
11/12/1995 EC 64,
1/15/1998 Dünnershaus
Your Closeness
Your closeness has
Punctured
Holes in me
Now I stand
Here flooded in light
You are
The new name
For the dream
I've so often
Tried to weave
Always have to start over
I
If I sit on the mountain
I am stone
I rest
If I am in the steppe
I am grass
I grow
If I stand at the river
I am water
I flow
If I lie in the woods
I am tree
I rustle
Homecoming
The longing
That I cannot prove
Is my excuse
I've carried it as carefully
As a brimming bowl
But where is the hand
That can take it from me?
Where's the mouth to drink from it?
And where's the healing patch of Mother Earth
Where I can set
My burning soles again?
Strangers pass by
The whipping and jolting
Storm of time
Has totally emptied them
I stand to one side and
Watch them without longing or empathy
We've grown apart