TALKING POETRY

Mamang Dai
River Poems

The Missing link

I will remember then
the great river that turned, turning
with the fire of the first sun,
away from the old land of red robed men
and poisonous ritual,
when the seven brothers fled south
disturbing the hornbills in their summer nests.

Remember the flying dust
and the wind like a long echo
snapping the flight of the river beetle,
venomous in the caves
where men and women dwelt facing the night
guarding the hooded poison.

There are no records.
The river was the green and white vein of our lives
linking new terrain,
in a lust for land brother and brother
claiming the sunrise and the sunset,
in a dispute settled by the rocks
engraved in a vanished land.

I will remember then the fading voices
of deaf women framing the root of light
in the first stories to the children of the tribe.
Remember the river's voice:
Where else could we be born
where else could we belong
if not of memory

divining life and form out of silence.
Water and mist,
the twin gods, water and mist,
and the cloud woman always calling
from the sanctuary of the gorge

Remember, because nothing is ended
but it is changed.
And memory is a changing shape
showing with these fading possessions
in lands beyond the great ocean
that all is changed but not ended.

And in the villages the silent hill men still await
the long promised letters, and the meaning of words.

Sometimes

Sometimes I bow my head
and weep.
Sometimes I hide my face
and weep.
Sometimes I smile
and even so
I weep,
but you do not know
this art.

Sky Song

The evening is
the greatest medicine maker
testing the symptoms
of breath and demise,
without appointment
writing prescriptions
In the changing script
of a cloud's wishbone rib,
in the expanding body of the sky.

We left the tall trees standing.
We left the children playing.
We left the women talking
and men were predicting
good harvests or bad,
that winged summer we left,
racing with the leopards of morning.

I do not know how we bore the years.
By ancient, arched gates
I thought I saw you waving,
in greeting or farewell, I could not tell;
when summer changed hands again
only the eastern sky remained;
One morning, flowering peonies
swelled my heart with regret.

Summer's bitter pill was a portion of sky
like a bird's wing, altering design.
A race of fireflies bargaining with the night.

Attachment is a gift of time, I know,
the evening's potion provides
heaven's alchemy in chromosomes of light,
lighting cloud fires
in thumbprints of the sky.

Birthplace

We are the children of the rain
Of the cloud woman,
Brother to the stone and bat
In our cradle of bamboo and vine
In our long houses we slept,
And when morning came
We were refreshed.

There were no strangers
in our valley.
Recognition was instant
as clan by clan we grew,
and destiny was simple
like a green shoot
following direction
like the sun and moon.

The first drop of water
gave birth to man.
From red sheath
to green stem
and the spreading wind:

We descend
from solitude and miracles.