friday refrains · aliki barnstone
Saturday 12 July 2008 | 8 cookies in the jar
SKY BURIAL
Snowlands Hotel. Before dawn in one of the dormitories
David is up first, moving from bed to bed waking us gently.
We mount our clanking Flying Pigeon bikes and ride out of town
On the dusty road, telling each other our dreams.
Traveler’s word is, if a fire’s burning there will be a burial.
The fire burns. We park our bicycles by a shallow river
And roll up our pants. Water so icy that I bend over
On the opposite shore, breathing slowly, coaxing my feet
From the pain. Already a silhouette of vultures
Gathered on the mountain above us. A monk in yellow robes
Bright in the half-light chants, hits a tambourine and cymbal.
A young woman in an animal skin coat nurses a child,
The boy and girl beside her talk and laugh like spectators
At a Chinese soccer game. An older man spins something
Like a large, long, extravagantly decorated hat atop a broomstick;
Colored rings and ribbons float up, chime, and relax
With each turn. Now six men stamp out the fire and cross
To a large boulder where they undo two squarish bundles.
Two corpses roll out in fetal position, naked,
Their gender and age unintelligible. Laying them out
On their bellies, the men start their work. Sun
Begins to show us color on the ridges of the mountains,
Spreading, illuminating this rocky valley
Where starting at the necks the corpses are skinned,
The sheets of skin tossed to the men behind,
Who cut them into small squares;
The muscles are pulled from bone, limbs disjointed from body,
Bones crushed in absorbing white powder with a rock.
It is like a butcher shop. Pounding, hacking, slapping,
Hundreds of vultures wait on the rocks or circle
Or, swooping down to the boulder too early, are shooed away
By the corpse-cutters. I cringe when they get to the feet,
And keep looking back to my bicycle, which is delicate,
Dark, pretty by the whitened river. By now it is light;
The city is awake: trucks and tractors rumble,
Loudspeakers have resumed broadcasting political homilies.
I pass my waterbottle to friends. Some of us sit alone and stare.
Some of us hold each other. A few look through binoculars.
Everything is clicking, rhythmic:
Chanting; voices directing from the central government;
Chopping; the river hisses; vultures glide or preen;
Small reverent, nervous, or revolted gestures of tourists.
Supports and resistances move. For now and perhaps
For a while afterward my fears are merely furniture
I can walk around or discard. I will be
Like those two—dismembered, insensible, incomprehensible—
But—lucky accident—my flesh aches and lusts.
At last the corpse-cutter wraps the head in a cloth,
Holds it up to the sky, prays, places it in a hollow,
And smashes it with a rock.
Two others cross to the flat where we stand
And drive us back a few steps. Bloody hands and bloody knives.
One of them taps me with his blade.
I check my sleeve for a stain, but I’m clean.
I’ve read the ground here, frozen most of the year,
Is no good for burial. There’s too little timber for cremation.
When the soul is gone, the body means nothing.
Sometimes the Tibetans leave their dead
In a river to be eaten by fish.
We say dust to dust. This is flesh to flesh.
Vultures, symbols of peace,
The carnivore self that does not kill,
Circle huge, horrible, beautiful, black-white in the blue.
The white V’s of their bodies and their wingtip feathers
Spread like black fingers in the sky
Of turquoise the Tibetans wear. The vultures eat.
I must get my visa at the Nepalese consulate.
As we ride back together Anna says, “I felt we were no better
Than the vultures.” “Really?” I say. I’m enjoying
The view of the Potala, people selling their wares,
My legs peddling, the clanking bike, the sun on my face.
I search for some guilt, but find nothing—
Only this happiness, wind, elation, breath circling.
—Aliki Barnstone (via ted and ween’s compendium)
8 cookies in the jar
post your glowing encomium (or bitter philippic) »
Follow this heated, lively discussion through its very own feed; also, you can pingback or trackback from your own doubtlessly much more interesting site.
Hey, thanks for this (I’ve got a sky burial poem myself. There’s probably enough sky burial poems out there for an anthology) (love that sky burial!). And your comment on “almond-shaped wound.” I feel like I’ve been “sneaking” looks at your blog. No more sneaking! I read it and enjoy it.
d
Brava for delurking! Sky Burial: An Anthology of Poems That Should Be Merely Disgusting But Are Somehow Nonetheless and/or Therefore Lovely?
I love the simplicity of this description, and the elegance. It reminds me of: “Those who lack discrimination, whose minds are unsteady and whose hearts are impure, never reach the goal, but are born again and again. But he who has discrimination, whose mind is steady and whose heart is pure, reaches the goal, and having reached it is born no more.” —Katha Upanishad
I’m glad you like it; of course I’m all about the impure rebirth. ;o)
I agree and will express my sympathy…in a poem.
Tú
eres
tu presente,
tu manzana:
tómala
de tu árbol,
levántala
en tu
mano,
brilla
como una estrella,
tócala,
híncale el diente y ándate
silbando en el camino.
—Pablo Neruda, “Oda al presente”
I like this image by Neruda that being in the present means you are the tree and the apple, and the hand. If we condition ourselves (i.e. through meditation) to rid ourselves of impure thoughts, this conditioning is an antecedent cause, and not permanent, hence we will return to ordinary levels of consciousness. Enlightenment (I suppose, not having been there) involves embracing the impure and the suffering of life. “Sink your teeth into it, and go whistling on your way.”
Ah, Señor Neruda! There’s the Vegetable Root Sutra too: “Water that is too pure has no fish.”
D’accord, not only have I not personally visited “enlightenment” (which always makes me think of my German-speaking priest friend who would ask us to “disenlighten the candles”) but I don’t even know anyone who’s managed anything even remotely close to being rid of impure thoughts, even during a half-hour period of zazen.
I do know a couple of people who’ve been completely, unexpectedly transformed—had the experience Zen calls “kensho.” It seems to take a while before they can head back down to the village (cf. Ten Oxherding Pictures), but when they do their relationship to everyone and everything has changed. From the outside, it doesn’t seem like they embrace suffering, exactly, but that, in the words of Ms. Byron Katie, they become lovers of reality.
And then there’s the wise AA practice of acting-as-if, useful for those of us just muddling along the best we can.
Hey, next time I’m visiting my loony parents in Texas, we should all (you me & Ms. Jenzai—not my parents) get together!!!!!!!!!! <–excessive enthusiastic exclams
No wonder you know suffering so intimately, you’re FROM Texas, where far from pure, the fish still float on the water….
Oh, and by all means we should get together…maybe we can all go out for sushi ;o)