Late, late and bone tired. Three days between rains, and I have worked like a beast to pull weeds and pick vegetables and sow the next seeds, working from boards laid between the rows in the garden so that I won’t damage the soggy garden. If this were India, it would be monsoon season, and I could rest at my teacher’s feet and take in the dharma. No such luck here at Pelden Farm.
Well, maybe I do get to take in the dharma. My daughter-in-law brought me supper—tomatoes in bleu cheese dressing and crushed black pepper, fresh baked bread, and a bowl of red raspberries she picked while she waited for me to wash up. And this poem, too, which she read out loud and then wept over, saying it’s the best thing she’s seen in years. That means something to me since she knows her poetry.
It’s called “Losar Greeting” and it’s by a young Tibetan named Tenzin Tsundue. You can see his work at http://www.universeofpoetry.org/tibet.shtml.
Losar Greeting
by Tenzin Tsundue
Tashi delek!
Though in a borrowed garden
you grow, grow well my sister.
This Losar
when you attend your Morning Mass,
say an extra prayer
that the next Losar
we can celebrate back in Lhasa.
When you attend your convent classes,
learn an extra lesson
that you can teach children back in Tibet.
Last year
on our Happy-Losar,
I had an Idli-Sambar breakfast
and wrote my BA final exams.
My Idlis wouldn’t stand
on my toothed steely forks,
but I wrote my exams well.
Though in a borrowed garden
you grow, grow well my sister.
Send your roots
through the bricks,
stones, tiles and sand.
Spread your branches wide
and rise
above the hedges high.
Tashi delek!
Happy early World Tibet Day. To bed! To bed!
