The River Flows Gently

DASHBALBAR FOUNDATION
The River FIows GentIy

Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
UIaanbaatar 2007
DDC
The River FIows GentIy
Copyright 2007, D. Gangabaatar
TransIator: Simon Wickham-Smith
Editor: D.Gangabaatar
ISBN:
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
wish !rst to thank Ochirbatyn Dashbalbar's son Dashbalbarin
Gangabaatar for giving me the opportunity to translate his father's poetry.
Gangaa has been extremely generous with his time, despite work and
family commitments, in order to help me with information regarding his
father's life and work, and it is to him that owe the greatest debt of thanks.
Other concrete help has come from Gombojavyn Mend-Ooyo and
Oyoogiin Munkhnaran in Ulaanbaatar. Places to work and sleep and eat
and relax have been provided in the US and the UK by Lyn Cof!n, Elizabeth
Myhr, Katharine Norris, the collected effort of Tim Wilson and Necati Zontul
and by my father, Frank Wickham-Smith.
As always, would like to thank my father for his encouragement, which
knows no limits. And, as is becoming ever more frequent now, would like
to thank Elizabeth Myhr for being. Simply for being.
Simon Wickham-Smith
Seattle WA
23 October 2007
"
The River Flows Gently
OCHIRBATYN DASHBALBAR
AND THE POETRY OF LOVE
Simon Wickham-Smith
Ochirbatyn Dashbalbar was born in the Naran district of Sukhbaatar
aimag, in the east of Mongolia, in 1957
1
. He completed high school in
Sukhbaatar and in 1984 graduated from the Gorky School of Literary
Studies in Moscow. His relationship with the written word and with books
was apparent from an early age, and it is said that he was interested in
poetry even before he learnt properly to read. ndeed, friends report how he
loved books and how he would always say that he would own a big library
when he was grown up. As soon as he began to earn money, he would
1
The biographical inIormation Ior this paper comes Irom email correspondence with Dashbalbar`s son,
D Gangaabaatar during October 2007.
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
spend all his income on books.
His fascination with poetry drew him into writing and, throughout his
school years, he would carry notebooks with him, jotting down ideas
for poetry. He studied literature in Moscow and devoted all his time to
examining and understanding poetry, and to composing his own work.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, the in"uence of the free market
reforms in Mongolia resulted in a combination of social poverty and political
corruption within the country. Dashbalbar seems, before this point, to have
been disinterested in politics, but during the !rst years of post-Soviet rule,
he became more and more dissatis!ed with the behavior of politicians,
whom he believed were misleading the electorate and acting primarily in
their own interests, rather than in the interests of the people.
Having been elected to the Great State Khural in the !rst democatic
elections, held in June 1992, as a representative of the Traditional United
Conservative Party, Dashbalbar, already a popular literary !gure, quickly
became a popular politician. However, his popularity rendered him
vulnerable to outside forces, in particular in the chaos surrounding the fall
1998 murder of the democratic leader Sanjaasuregiin Zorig, for which some
people believed him directly responsible.
ndeed, throughout his time in politics, Dashbalbar was the subject of
numerous accusations and insinuations, all of which proved groundless.
There were subtle insinuations from certain political groups opposed to
Dashbalbar that he might somehow have been involved in Zorig's murder,
and one cynical journalist sought to accuse him of sexual harrassment,
admitting only later that she had made this accusation so as to increase
sales of her newspaper, which indeed was sold out and reprinted that same
day. However, the vast popular support which his personal integrity, his lack
of ostentation, and his stand against corruption gained him meant that he
became gradually more and more vulnerable to such attacks.
According to his son Gangabaatar, during the last few months of his
life, Dashbalbar began complaining that he was being poisoned by state-
sanctioned of!cials. On October 16th 1999, Dashbalbar was admitted
to hospital, and eventually died later that night. The medical situation in
Mongolia at that time made it impossible for a full post mortem to be carried
out, and so the true cause of his death remains unknown. t seems that
the public continues to believe that he had, like Zorig almost exactly a year
before, been murdered, primarily because of his opposition to government
corruption, but also, one might imagine, because of his national popularity.
$
His popularity was not engendered solely in his advocacy of the people,
but also for the way in which he carried himself. n his essay "Dashbalbar
Ochirbat and the Art of being Proud
2
, the poet and critic P Batkhuyag
speaks about how Dashbalbar realised that his words were not pleasing to
everyone, how he would joke, "My passionate spirit is tough on everyone.
Starting from today, shall have a pleasant spirit. From what Batkhuyag
says, it is clear that Dashbalbar realised that he was subject to attack from
opposing forces and, moreover, that he was prepared and willing to stand
up for his beliefs.
A full study of Dashbalbar's political career still has to be written, and
have not had the time to read all the texts pertinent to such a study in
preparation for this paper. For the bene!t of this introductory paper,
however, it is perhaps suf!cient to encapsulate his political philosophy
in this quotation, cited in an article written by the poet and scholar
A Davaasambuu, and spoken after he had left the Traditional United
Conservative Party for the Mongolian Traditional Justice Party: " have left
my party, but have not abandoned my motherland, my Mongolia. Mongolia
needs its land. Without its land, it is no longer a nation. will never align
myself with those who betray their land and their nation.
Before considering Dashbalbar's work and, in particular, the poems
collected in The River Flows Gently, want to try to place him and his
thought in the context of Mongolian letters during the second half of the
twentieth century. Given that almost no literary theoretical material has
been written in any language on this particular period
3
, a comparative study
is at present impossible. Nevertheless, it behoves us to acknowledge some
of the literary in"uences to which Dashbalbar would have been exposed,
both as a student in Mongolia and subsequently in the Soviet Union.
The work of the previous generation of writers, such as B Yavuukhulan
and M Tsedendorj, whose encouragement Dashbalbar explicitly
acknowledges in the dedication of his poem "Allegro, as well as that
of senior but slightly younger writers such as D Uriankhai, can be
characterised by an intensity of vision, a deep passion of the heart, and by
a desire and need to question the nature of post-revolutionary Mongolia.
2
The Iull text oI my translation oI this essay can be Iound online at www.ccalt.net/Texts/Mongolian/
Essays/Batkhuyag/DashbalbarOchirbat.pdI.
3
This situation, however, is beginning to change. There are critical essays being produced within
Mongolia by such contemporary scholars, critics and writers as Kh.Suglegmaa, P Batkhuyag, A Mnnkh-
Orgil and B Zolbayar; Dashbalbar himselI was also a critic and scholar oI literature. That being said,
the approach to literaty criticism in Mongolia is very diIIerent Irom that which pertains in the western
academic community and so these texts are Irequently not comparable to standard western criticism.
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
Their work draws of course from even further back in Mongolian literature,
from the nineteenth-century lyricism of njinashi (1839-1892) and the radical
spiritual nationalism of Danzanravjaa (1803-1856) and, even further back,
from the epics and ancient lyrics such as the Secret History or the national
chronicle of the Altan Tovch. Mongolian literature has always drawn heavily
on tradition, in terms both of culture and of literature, and the in"uences
which Dashbalbar would have received would undoubtedly have been
manifestations of Mongolia's independence, national pride and cultural
bene!ts, as seen through the lens of the work of previous generations.
n purely political terms, the world in which Dashbalbar grew up was
the hardline Mongolia of the 1960s, ruled from beyond the grave by
Marshal Kh Choibalsan and by his successor Yu Tsedenbal. The country's
increasingly closer ties with the Soviet Union during the late 1960s and
through the 1970s allowed many students to receive education in Moscow
or in Leningrad/St Petersburg. Dashbalbar was no exception, studying in
Moscow in the early 1980s, during which time several of the poems in this
book were written.
There are two notable references to Russian/Soviet culture in these
poems, namely to the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and to the nineteenth-
century writer Aleksandr Pushkin, generally considered to be the founder
of modern Russian literature. That Dashbalbar celebrates these two men is
worthy of some careful analysis, since parallels can be drawn between their
achievements and Dashbalbar's.
f we look at the references to Gagarin in The River Flows Gently, we can
form a picture of what Dashbalbar found so interesting about him. He says,
"have "own with Yuri Gagarin into the distant canopy of space ("Spring's
Braid), and " smiled Gagarin's smile among the distant stars ("A Man).
n the signi!cantly named "Freedom, he links Gagarin with the poet-monk
Danzanravjaa:
And Gagarin, who "ew to freedom in the realm of skies,
and Ravjaa, the great and wise man of letters, these
were the golden limbs, the distant parts of our lives!
This interest in the cosmos, in the exploration of space, included an
interest in the science of rocketry, and Dashbalbar mentions, alongside
Gagarin, the father of rocket science, Konstantin Tsiolkovski. Tsiolkovski, of
course, was another visionary and theoretical explorer, which places him
closer in some ways to Dashbalbar than was Gagarin: both Tsiolkovski
and Dashbalbar carried out their exploration in their imagination, without
&
the hindrance of that concrete experience which in the end, led perhaps to
Gagarin's downfall.
"At !rst, the reason for my coming into this world was to herd the young
calves, Dashbalbar wrote, "but then loved to watch the Mongolian
cosmonauts, loved to speak with them, loved everything! This
fascination with the world beyond Mongolia clearly sparked in Dashbalbar
a link, not only with the natural world, with the stars and the sky, as is so
constant a part of the Mongolian psyche, but with the stars as physical
objects, as objects of scienti!c as well as mystical signi!cance. Tsiolkovski
and Gagarin journeyed into the science of space, which offered to an
artist such as Dashbalbar an alternative approach to the understanding of
the sky and, for a Mongolian, whether a scientist or an artist, the stars
and the sky are of vital and enormous cultural importance. n his "melodic
fantasy, "Heaven
4
, he writes, "Beneath the sky of a hundred nights,
gently dream. Explanations in this mysterious life, like ideas, are not under
my control and, while am not affected by the domination of heaven,
which is for nothing and for no-one, still am aware of the open space.
Penetrating the deep secret of heaven, moving outwards through the doors
of the universe, and opening the endlessly lovely, undying, everlasting
and peaceful world, the stars rushed in song through the rays of the open
space, the entire world resounds as a single musical body. The tone of this
text, which signi!cantly comes at the beginning of the present book, is one
of discovery, of exploration, both of the inner and the outer cosmos: we can
imagine how for Dashbalbar, the skies somehow represented the heartmind
of human beings, a sphere open to endless investigation, through which
investigation we might learn both about ourselves and about the universe
in which we live. This idea recalls Tsiolkovski's famous statement (of which
Dashbalbar must also have been aware): "Earth is the cradle of humanity,
but one cannot forever remain in the cradle (translator unknown).
n comparison to Tsiolkovski and Gagarin, it is hard to gauge precisely
the nature of Aleksandr Pushkin's in"uence upon Dashbalbar. Obviously,
as one who spoke and read Russian "uently, Dashbalbar was aware of
Pushkin's incomparable place in the history of Russian literature. But, if we
read what he wrote about Pushkin in "Spring's Braid, we are left with a
number of questions.
Consider the following: "Nowadays, Russia bows to Pushkin. On the
plinth, where he has stood, without moving, for a hundred years, he is
4
In Mongolian, the word tenger can mean 'sky, Heaven, God, weather, which range oI meaning
indicates its somewhat more mystical associations. Clearly Dashbalbar wanted here to emphasise the
ancient Mongolian relationship with the divine, rather than simply with the scienti!c and materialistic
(Ior which the word ogtorgui would have been more suitable).
'
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
become a symbol of the majesty and wisdom of the Russian people. The
Russian people would be inconceivable without Pushkin, it is inconceivable
to imagine people and animals without Pushkin. We !nd ourselves
transmitted through Pushkin, and Pushkin represents the ultimate in human
talent, the beauty within humanity, he shows through himself the "ame of
the mind. n revering Pushkin, mankind reveres itself. This man Pushkin is
able to represent his people, he is able to meld with his people's elegance,
their particular qualities and their faults. f you would embody the Russian
people in a single person, the image which is able to express their !re, their
talent, their characteristics reveals itself as Pushkin. Pushkin was already
able to show the people, transmitted through himself, and thus it is obvious
that he was also able to show humanity! (Dashbalbar's italics)
Are these the words of a Mongolian seeking to understand Russian/
Soviet culture? Or is Dashbalbar simply himself, like Russia, in awe of
Pushkin's achievement? The constant switching here between Russia's
response and that of humanity is perplexing, especially when we realise
how little understood and known Pushkin's genius is, even today, outside
the Russian-speaking world. Dashbalbar's use of the Pushkin Memorial,
and of Pushkin himself, is indicative, would suggest, of a man struggling
to understand the culture of a country which had had such an impact, for so
many decades, on his own Mongolian people.
Moreover, of course, to equate the Russian people with humanity is to
emphasise the idea which would be central to much of Dashbalbar's
subsequent writings and political work, namely the common humanity of all
people. We shall see later how this plays out in poems such as "A Man
and the "Grass trilogy, but for now we need only be aware that Pushkin's
in"uence on the Russian people, as much as his effect on Russian
literature, was of great signi!cance to Dashbalbar's development, both as a
writer and as a social campaigner.
The result of Dashbalbar's sojurn in Moscow, then, was to open him to
a number of in"uences in situ, rather than from the distant viewpoint of
Mongolian society. He came to understand Russia and the Russian people
and their language from within and grew to understand their in"uences and
to observe how these in"uences played themselves out in his literary and
social consciousness. New constellations of experience were formed and
allowed to develop, with the result that he returned to Ulaanbaatar in 1984
with a new perspective, as much upon the world within himself as upon the
world beyond the con!nes of his own society.
A third in"uence on Dashbalbar's thinking must also be noted here.
The man he calles "divine Bruno, the sixteenth-century talian Dominican
()
philosopher Giordano Bruno, was one who sought to understand human
experience as it is perceived by the human mind. His works run through
epistemology, semantic theory, cosmology, alchemy and ontology, and he
is consumed with interest in the movement of the planets and in the in!nite,
isotropic universe. Dashbalbar, who, like most Mongolian intellectuals,
was also in"uenced by Danzanravjaa, seems at times to link this maverick
Buddhist scholar (killed by poisoning) with Bruno, the heretical Christian
Platonist (burnt at the stake): in fact, Dashbalbar's choice of language is
remarkable when he says, "Bruno burnt like a lotus "ame, discovering the
freedom of the mind,/gazing coolly upon us from the depths of the stars.
The lotus "ame is a direct echo of the lotus, upon which the Buddha is
iconographically shown, representing pure mind in bloom amid the mud
of the unenlightened world. Thus, we are reminded also of Bruno's own
statement: " split the Heavens and soar to the in!nite. What others see
from afar, leave far behind me.
The parallels between Bruno and the two Russian space explorers are
not hard to grasp, but what seems important to me is that all three of these
men of in"uence indeed, all Dashbalbar's cultural in"uences as presented
in the poems contained in this book are pushing human experience and
the investigation of human experience (that is, the interface of the human
mind with the world perceived) beyond the limits previously established.
Moreover, Bruno's in"uence as an alchemist of the mind (he was a friend
and associate of John Dee, one of the most important and controversial
scientists in Europe in the late 1500s) points not only to scienti!c
investigation and discovery of the cosmos but equally to the philosophical
investigation of the human mind, as exempli!ed by both Buddhist teaching
and by psychological advances during the twentieth century. We can
perhaps see the internal contradictions at work in these two pursuits in the
stanza of Dashbalbar's poem "Allegro which speci!cally deals with Bruno
and his legacy:
Bruno comes at dusk from antiquity to open the door.
That which has burnt him no longer illuminates others.
Silently, he stands at the threshold, his mantle sags around him.
His eyes are thoughtful, like two stars falling and glimmering..
n addition to Dashbalbar's cultural and literary in"uences from previous
generations, there remain the two contemporary poets with whom he
was, and is still, closely associated, D Nyamsuren (1947-2002) and
G Mend-Ooyo (b1952). This trio deserves a study to itself, but suf!ce
((
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
it to say here that Dashbalbar's relationship with the other two writers
obviously constiutued an interweaving of ideas rather than a group of
three individuals branching off at different angles. Dashbalbar seems to
have stood at the center of their continuum, neither as romantic and wild
as Nyamsuren (who spent little time in Ulaanbaatar, preferring to base
himself in the small township of Ereentsov) nor as aloof and reticent as
Mend-Ooyo.
Only Mend-Ooyo is mentioned in The River Flows Gently, and that only
a couple of times. Signi!cantly, he is mentioned in the !rst poem of the
"Grass trilogy, along with njinashi, Yavuukhulan and another contemporary,
J Saruulbuyan, as people "with grasses and/vegetation reaching to your
soles.. t is uncertain to me as to how this reference is to be read: given
the largely serious nature of Dashbalbar's ouvre as a whole, it might seem
unlikely that this was some veiled joke at Mend-Ooyo's expense, but it does
bring to mind an image of a highly traditional writer rooted in the land and
in the landscape, seen through a lens colored both by respect and by an
intimacy of friendship, which is certainly one way of understanding Mend-
Ooyo's personality and the depth of his relationship with Dashbalbar.
The work of all three of these writers, however, is characterised by a
powerful sense of individuality, and they seem to me to have exercised very
little direct in"uence on one another's poetic style and affect. t remains to
be seen how this trio of artists will be seen in terms of the development of
Mongolian literature during the late twentieth century but, as their works are
translated and published in the west, we will be able gradually to compare
and analyse to what extent and in what ways they indeed did in"uence one
another's work
5
.
n 1980, Dashbalbar wrote what would become probably his most famous
poem, "Love One Another, My People. Although it is not included in The
River Flows Gently, it is so central to an understanding of Dashbalbar's
poetic work that shall quote it here in full:
5
To date (October 2007) I have published a translation oI Mend-Ooyo`s novel Golden Hill and a
collection oI his poetry, Nomadic Lvrics (both Ulaanbaatar, 2007, Mongolian Academy oI Poetry and
Culture; both Iorthcoming Irom Kegan Paul, London, 2008). The complete poetic works oI Nyamsuren
are scheduled Irom the same Mongolian publisher in 2009 and the publication oI at least one Iurther
volume oI Dashbalbar`s work is scheduled Ior publication in 2008.
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LOVE ONE ANOTHER, MY PEOPLE
Love one another, my people, while you are alive.
Don't keep from others whatever you !nd beautiful.
Don't wound my heart with heedless barbs, and
don't push anyone into a dark hole.
Don't mock someone who's gotten drunk,
think how it could even be your father.
And, if you manage to become famous,
open the door of happiness to others!
They should also not forget your kindness.
To someone who is lacking a single word of kindness,
You should search for it and speak it out.
Whether outside in the sun or at home when it's cold,
don't spend one moment at rest.
Don't use harsh words to complain, you women,
about the kind young man you remember.
Speak lovingly to those who loved you!
Let them remember you as a good lover.
Our lives are really similar,
our words constrict our throats the same way,
our tears drop onto our cheeks the same way
things are much the same as we go along the road.
Wipe away a halt woman's tears without a word,
talk your lover up when she's tripped and fallen!
Today you're smiling, tomorrow you'll be crying.
Another day you're sad, and the next you'll be singing.
We all pass from the cradle to the grave -
if for no other reason, love one another!
People must not lack love on this wide earth!
grasp happiness with the !re of my human mind,
the golden sun shines lovingly upon us all the same, and
so think that loving others is the path of life,
understand that to be loved by others is great joy.
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
t is perhaps tempting to see this single poem as the nexus of all that
Dashbalbar wrote, but would suggest rather that it be used as a multi-
faceted prism, through which the essays and poems in the present
collection may be viewed.
Dashbalbar's articulation of love ranges from the universal to the
individual, but what is striking is the intimacy with which he describes his
expression and understanding of love. n his essay "Spring's Braid, or the
Lyrical Precipice, he meditates on the apprehension of Leonardo da Vinci's
Mona Lisa: he says, "when we look at this picture, we forget everything,
we forget that we are on the earth, we grasp the magic of the picture but
we gaze at the picture, we are breathing with the picture. Neither the
identity of Leonardo nor that of Mona Lisa are important here, rather what
is important is the psychophysical experience of the image. t is more than
seeing, more even than looking, it is an interbeing, where the observer and
the observed meld together, in a kind of unity delineated by the fragility of
time and space. We read such deep intimacy elsewhere in Dashbalbar's
work and it becomes clear that somehow for him the expression of love is
the expression of being human.
t is perhaps instructive to consider the poems in The River Flows Gently
through the prism of "Love One Another, My People, not only because of
the importance of the latter in Dashbalbar's output, but also because it was
written in 1980, at about the same time as many of the poems in the current
volume. The poem itself seems to me to exhibit a combination of rhetorical
humanism and a profound and emotional intimacy a perfect combination,
one might say, for a poet-cum-politician.
Throughout Dashbalbar's work, the human condition, the human heart, is
seen at once as a universal and as highly personal phenomenon. n "Love
One Another, My People, however, the expression of openness and of a
highly developed level of personal empathy in the words used indicates a
feeling for the wider world, for a kind of family of man, which the poet trusts
lies at the heart of our experience.
Let us compare this poem with two others in The River Flows Gently
"For You and "A Man. The titles alone should provoke some awareness,
some perception of what Dashbalbar is seeking to convey here. The
simplicity of these titles seems perhaps to indicate a simplicity of purpose,
and in some ways that is precisely what we get.
"For You is ostensibly a love poem, addressed to a woman who has once
been, or is maybe still, Dashbalbar's lover. But as we read through the text,
we can be struck by the universal language used: the setting is the world,
rather than a speci!c place, the love is expressed in terms of intimacy, but
("
it appears to me that she who is addressed is more than an individual, that
her presence is in some way a mirror or a representative of the world of
which Dashbalbar is part.
n "A Man, too, it is interesting how the language, though wide and
extensive and open, is equally personal and intimate. Dashbalbar is able,
by inserting into a text which is ostensibly about the nature of humanity
the experiences of being an individual (" travel on a distant road, singing
and carrying my backpack./ am A MAN! like to get wet in the snow, to
stand out in the rain./ am A MAN! like to read a brand new book, to kiss
a woman's lips) and by adding these to the idea of the universal man
(and here am reminded of Dashbalbar's hero Leonardo's picture of the
Vitruvian Man), to express the profundity of the human condition, of being
neither fully an individual nor fully a manifestation of society as a whole.
To return to Dashbalbar's comments on the Mona Lisa (which/whom
he refers to as "La Gioconda), it is as though the viewer is trans!xed
and transformed into an aspect of the world which s/he and the (subject
matter of the) portrait inhabits, there is a feeling that the universal and the
individual are two sides of the same coin. This is a very powerful way of
looking at art, of course, for it emphasises the inter-relationship of artist
and audience in a way that a more prosaic approach might fail to do. This
technique makes it possible for Dashbalbar to express humanity and inter-
relationship, to talk deeply of personal power and private intimacy, and to
encourage others to look anew and afresh at their relationship with the
world and with each other, while still ostensibly dealing with a personal
relationship of love or else a deep relationship with the cosmos.
Both of these poems were written in the mid-1980s, some time before
Dashbalbar became interested in running for political of!ce. There is a
great deal of research to be carried out regarding his political career and
its relationship to his poetic work, but suf!ce it to say that we can see, all
through the poems here collected, the ideas of equality and honesty and
self-determination which informed his politics.
n "Spring's Braid, Dashbalbar speaks of the interaction between the
writer and ther reader, how the writer creates the context in which the
reader can discover his or her own approach to, and understanding of,
a work of art. "A work of art never explains itself to you and it is only by
listening to its whisper that a person can make art. Talent is somewhat
similar for the creator and the reader. The talent for reading is an artistic
talent! n this way, the reader creates along with the creator. The capability
to preserve through art what the creator intends for himself, and the talent
of contemplation which comes from the art, are what creates the reader.
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
Reading this alongside "A Man and "For You, and with an awareness of
what Dashbalbar would accomplish over the course of the following !fteen
years, it becomes clear that the driving force behind his experience of
being a poet, as much as of simply being a part of Mongolian society, of the
universe itself, is a combination of self-determination and awareness of the
presence of others, on both a literal, physical level and at the level at which
time and space collapses.
So, as we begin to investigate the poems of The River Flows Gently,
we see how Dashbalbar's sensibility relates to the position of himself and
others on many different levels throughout the universe. His language and
subject matter the powerful repetition of " am A MAN, for instance, or
the presence throughout the poems of particular historical !gures such as
Giordano Bruno and Homer (and, interestingly, Mongolians appear less
frequently than Europeans, again pointing to the concept of the universal
in Dashbalbar's thought) indicate a kinship stretching beyond both the
con!nes of Mongolia and the construct of time.
One of Dashbalbar's concerns as a politician was the importance of
Mongolia's independence and nationhood: he was a passionate advocate
of self-suf!ciency and campaigned against the activity within the country
of foreign business, as well as against the relationship between the
Mongolian political and business communities and foreign governments, in
particular the Chinese. t is instructive, then, to look at the way in which he
emphasises self-reliance whilst emphasising also the unity of the world and
the environment.
n the paper already quoted, Batkhuyag speaks of the !rst conversation
he had with Dashbalbar. Dashbalbar's words provide another access point
into his work: "'An ndian ascetic said that, when we've !nished cutting
down all the trees and catching all the !sh, we'll understand that we cannot
eat gold. n just this way, when one aged eagle is left in the mountains and
one dark wolf is left on the steppe, then people will understand the wisdom
of being proud. These creatures were born from a divine lineage and it
seems that they have more pride than we humans do. So that we might be
proud, we can learn one small thing from the eagle and the wolf, which is to
speak the truth. n our behavior, we should appear to be just like the eagle,
just like the wolf rushing over the steppe.' This statement !ts into the long
tradition of wilderness writing and of ecological advocacy, and in many
ways it echoes landmark speeches such as Chief Seattle's 1854 address
to the Commissioner of ndian Affairs for Washington Territory. The passion
and directness with which Dashbalbar speaks of the natural world, and of
the human position within it and response to it, suggests an understanding,
($
both of the personal and the corporate toll which humanity exercises. t is
interesting to see how, during the 1990s and, following Dashbalbar's death,
into the twenty-!rst century, environmental and land-based politics such
as that concerned with mining - have developed in Mongolia, alongside the
interventions of both domestic and foreign concerns.
These concerns are clearly articulated in Dashbalbar's poetry, albeit in a
more intimate and less overtly political fashion. As we read these poems,
however, we should remain aware that the majority were written some
time before he became involved with politics, and we can perhaps view
these (and the other ideas described in this paper) as some kind of proto-
manifesto, outlining the concerns which he was to develop over the years
prior to his death.
The interweaving of the natural world and the world of politics is made
clear in the three "Grass poems, written in 1983. The !rst few lines of
the !rst poem in the sequence expresses Dashbalbar's vision, not only
concerning the grasses but also, would hazard, nature itself and the living
organism of the universe as a whole:
Oh, grasses, my parents and my brothers and my children at a single
time..
Oh, grasses, my dear body and my pure desire and my loving
companions..
Sighing gently, stroke the grasses.
My grasses, take in your scent as an infant's soft curly hair.
My grasses, stroke you as old men stroke their white beards.
My grasses, kiss you as kiss my passionate lover's hair, black as
spades.
Oh, grasses, my coursing blood, my pigtails..
Oh, my ancestors in times rubbed and wasted away,
Oh, they blow in the wind, dissolve into grasses.
What is signi!cant about these lines is the way in which they associate
the grasses with the ancestors, at once dead and still very much living
in the land and in the traditions of Mongolia. They are, "at a single time,
Dashbalbar's family, another indication of the extent to which he felt himself
directly connected to the natural world, and to the ancestors and to his own
society. This of course is not uncommon in Mongolian literature: indeed,
both Nyamsuren and Mend-Ooyo, both of whom were close friends of, and
(%
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
frequently linked to, Dashbalbar, speak at length of such thing in their own
work; there is, moreover, a deep tradition in Mongolian poetry of honoring the
land and the ancestors. Nonetheless, it seems to me important to notice the
depth of physical, corporeal connection which Dashbalbar perceives here, in
how truly uni!ed a whole he appears to view the world. t is the language which
is unusual here, rather than the ideas which it conveys. Dashbalbar's highly
sensuous image of his caressing the grasses as his lover's black hair is picked
up in the third poem in the sequence where he writes, " am the carpet beneath
a pair of lovers. t is almost as though he is imagining himself, as the grasses,
as a kind of matchmaker: in fact, elsewhere in this poem, he writes,
n peaceful times, men and grasses make friends,
and they strive to support each other beneath the distant stars,
and they are great allies!
So here we have Dashbalbar not only envisioning himself directly in the
form and psychic aspect of the grasses, but equally he is showing the deep
and ancient relationship which exists between the human world and the
world of grasses.
Again in these poems we are reminded of the political aspect of
Dashbalbar's poetic voice. There is clearly a strong connection between the
grass and the people, and this relates to his advocacy of humanity as part
of, rather than acting against, the universe.
The second of these three poems illustrates why Dashbalbar feels such
a connection with grasses. The entire text is concerned with the power and
resolute nature of grass, how they "grow and completely cover the world,
how, "like needles, their young bodies directly penetrate the road. They are
even more like humans:
The grasses, with humans and animals, manage every calamity,
dying together, awakening together, through many eons,
falling, exactly like a man, struck down by the scythe of cruel war,
rising, exactly like a man, from the smoke of !res,
never abandoning the world!
n such a way, then, Dashbalbar is offering us a way of understanding
the world, in which grasses are not merely metaphors for humans, they are
speci!cally identi!ed with humans, and humans thereby with grasses; they are
perceived as existing in the same way, as being simply two species of equal
and related worth, as having comparable feelings and desires and experiences.
(&
And it is this way of understanding the relationship between human beings and
the grasses which cover the world upon which they dwell that informs his vision
for how humans should be living. As if to compliment what he says in "Love
One Another, My People, that "the golden sun shines lovingly upon us all the
same, in this poem he says, "The grasses of the world, like anyone else, love
freedom. Thus our common humanity is replaced by an even deepet idea,
our common existence under the sun: we and the grasses and the world as
a whole all desire and yearn for freedom, for the opportunity to live a complete
and ful!lled life, to express ourselves and to grown and develop as we have
been made to do. There is no more potent expression of Dashalbar's faith in
humanity, would suggest, than these three poems about grass.
This faith in the human experience and in the relationship of humans
with one another and with the natural world is perhaps the most potent and
signi!cant expression, both of Dashbalbar's love and of his encouragement
of love in others. Again, in "Love One Another, My People, we read:
Our lives are really similar,
our words constrict our throats the same way,
our tears drop onto our cheeks the same way
things are much the same as we go along the road.
While this is obviously a reference to the human world, we have already
seen that he makes clear connections between the human world and the
world as a whole, and it takes little imagination to make the connection
between the sentiment expressed in these lines and those of the three
"Grass poems. The extrapolation from the "Grass poems into the universe
as a whole does not constitute a vast leap of understanding and it is in the
depth of intimacy, the feeling of love between the poet and the universe,
that we !nd the social and political import so vital, so gravid.
The existence of the natural world, of course, takes place within the
con!nes of time and its inexorable movement. Dashbalbar speaks very little
of the nature of time itself, and a great deal (implicitly and explicitly) about
the interpenetration of time and existence. n the one poem in the present
volume which deals directly with time, indeed its title is "Time, he explicitly
states,
Amid the silence of the not quite empty, not quite empty space,
the world's sphere revolves, wearing itself away..
A single eye watches a leaf, me, floating on the river of time,
imagines it, unsevered from timelessness..
('
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
The constant repetition which is a feature of this poem seems to reveal
just how Dashbalbar understands time as a characteristic of the universe.
t is "darkness, "beginningless, "endless and "inconceivable, over and
over and over, and the constancy and the variations upon this constancy
from line to line are indicators of the subtle changes in the reality which
constitutes the progress, the forward development of time.
But more interesting to Dashbalbar, believe, is the place of humanity
within time and, in particular, how the experience of humanity has been
felt in similar ways throughout history. We have already seen how in "A
Man, Dashbalbar extends his personhood to encompass the experience of
different people(s) in different places; the same is true in this poem for the
experience of these people(s) over time.
The way in which Dashbalbar constructs time seems to be directly related
to his understanding of the experience of humanity and its environment.
We have already seen how he seeks to convey his personal experience
as being somehow melded, whether psychophysically through the natural
world or in a mystical way through a common sense of humanity: the time
in which this melding takes place collapses into a single moment, expands
to !ll the universe, equally and absolutely.
This exposition of time is achieved through placing next to one another
different timeframes, different references for time. For instance, in "Autumn
and Time, Dashbalbar compares the ruins of the temple at Manzushriin
Khiid with a young tourist: "A foreign girl, in a red shirt and blue trousers,
is standing over there, in the shadow of the temple, her shimmering beauty
does not amaze [Manzushriin Khiid's] own great majesty, which seems
small amidst the mountains. They balance one the other.
"Looking up, it is as though a thousand years are in these traces, these
cliffs above the ridges on the Heaven-touching mountains, and they are still
and silent. Through this descriptive comparison, he expresses not only
the visual but also the historical: the temple's antiquity and the girl's youth
parallel and contrast one another at the same time, meeting across the
centuries however and interpenetrating at a deep level of experience.
The title of this essay is also worth considering. t is one of a series of
essays and poems about autumn, which Dashbalbar tells us is "my favorite
season. The cycle of the seasons is of great importance to Mongolian
literature: nomadic culture requires an awareness of the changing year and
the transition periods between seasons, so that essential labor can be carried
out and encampments moved and consolidated. But Dashbalbar's preference
for autumn seems to relate more to its place in the yearly cycle, the special
emphasis which it makes upon the natural world and thereby upon the human
*)
inhabitants of that world. The expression of autumn is inexorably bound up
with the passing of time and with the hidden potential for transcendence, and
it is in this context which Dashbalbar chooses principally to use it.
n this series of poems based on the autumnal cycle, Dashbalbar runs
through a day, from morning through daytime and evening and into night-
time. Towards the middle of the day, amid the clarity of the skies and the
water, amid the white ger and the women who are talking together as they
work, he experiences a kind of vision:
The young girl laughs until the quartz clacks.
She appears there, standing in the rainbow of my thoughts.
n the haze of long ago, a rain of starry stories, and
The children of my age were horses in the meadow at the bottom of my
heart.
came to the horses, bringing a young girl,
came to bind a rainbow from the depths of skyblue stars..
The stars flow with song, laugh at the girl from deep skyblue Heaven,
and discover magic on the back of a galloping steed!
Now the yellow shirt is too small for my son, now the little girl has grey
hair,
And amid these wonderful thoughts, seem to see a dance of happy
dreams.
There are several observations to be made about this passage. The
language is strange and visionary, but it also expresses the immanence of
dreams and thus the way in which the poet perceives the interplay of time
and space and the reality or otherwise of what he is seeing before his eyes.
t should also be said that the progress of time, even within these few lines,
is presented in an extremely clear fashion: it is the stars, "owing with song,
and the poet, upon the galloping steed, which drive the years past in but a
couple of lines, at the end of which movement the years have brought the
transformation of age, mimicked by the transformation of autumn.
The endless "ow of time is also a theme of these autumn poems. The
!nal lines of "An Autumn Evening encapsulate something of the feeling
which Dashbalbar wants to express to his readers about the human
apprehension of, and relationship to, the "ow of time. He says,
Moreover, time and people flow forward,
they remain now, passing below Heaven, moving into the future.
*(
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
But the past, the present and the future are our conceptions,
and don't they who deny the threefold flow of our one great time rush
onwards, down the runnels?
The interesting point here is the "threefold "ow, a phrase which brings
together the ideas of past/present/future and of continuous "ow. This is a
strangely comforting paradox, a paradox with which we are somehow quite
familiar, but it nonetheless throws into relief both our (mis)conception of
time as a series of separate parts and our perception of it as being a single
entity, rushing down the runnels, passing into the future.
Dashbalbar regards time as a profound force and, in the shortest poem in
this book, he manages to express both the poignant beauty of the autumn
and the natural un"inching harshness of time:
As though paying out golden pieces,
a reward for love in the six months of spring and summer,
the !ne, untamed poplar casts away its leaves.
The soft winds of autumn hold them,
like the sun's accountant, turning them in air.
The poplar tree is a stock image for a lover, and the falling of leaves in
this context speaks for itself. The sun and the wind work together, holding
them in brightness and in air, casting them about, we suppose, to settle
upon the earth. n only !ve lines, the poet speaks of love and time, and of
the death or transformation of the self.
The origin of Dashbalbar's own understanding of time would seem to be
drawn from several sources. We have already seen that he was interested
in cosmology and in the ideas of in!nity proposed by Tsiolkovski and Bruno.
Moreover, there are clear in"uences from Buddhism in his use of language
and in the idea of the past, present and future as being merely ideations.
But it strikes me that his approach to the passing of time, the way in which
he con!gures it as a macrocosmic version of the autumn day, is of his own
thinking, albeit drawing on a tradition found both in Mongolian literature,
and in other world literatures with which he might or might not have been
familiar, of the cycle of the seasons as being an analog for the human and
the cosmic cycle of existence.
Such a view, of course, leads us to contemplate ourselves as an endlessly
repeating cycle of birth and death: the Buddhist conception of life as a circle
of regeneration, combined, and maybe contrasted, with the experiential
cycle of life as seen in nature, not only provides us with an understanding
**
of time as envisioned and expressed in Dashbalbar's poetry, but, as we see
in the teaching of all the spiritual paths (such as the Vajrayana Buddhism
as practised in Mongolia) which sprang orginally from the ndic tradition, it
also gives us a palpable reason for acting with compassion for, and with
understanding of, other beings, both human and nonhuman.
With this in mind, then, we can return to "Love One Another, My People,
and observe the way in which time, the "ow of which we have already seen
to be inevitable, the cyclic nature of which we have already apprehended, is
used by Dashbalbar as an encouragement to develop love for others, from
both a spiritual and a practical point of view.
At !rst glance, there seems to be nothing explicit about these ideas
concerning compassion and the unstoppable passing of time, with which we
have just been wrestling. What reveals itself gradually, however, are echoes
of a particular aspect of Buddhist teaching and, moreover, the work of its best-
known Mongolian exponent. For the poetic work of the nineteenth century monk
Danzanravjaa, the !fth Noyon Khutugtu of the Gobi, are full of instructional
texts and full of advice to his students. Dashbalbar's advice in this poem is very
similar to much of Danzanravjaa's. For instance, when Dashbalbar writes,
Today you're smiling, tomorrow you'll be crying.
Another day you're sad, and the next you'll be singing.
We all pass from the cradle to the grave -
if for no other reason, love one another!
there are clear echoes of Danzanravjaa's many poems of encouragement,
such as this one, written for one of his student supporters
6
:
6
This poem is on p90 oI my translation oI Danzanravjaa`s poetic works, Perfect Qualities. The
Collected Poems of the 5th Novon Khutagt Dan:anravfaa (1803-1856) (2006, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolian
Academy oI Poetry and Culture)
*!
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
FOR DASH ZAISAN
The lama, in his great love,
Scolds what is harmful.
But if, with a satis!ed mind,
We remain present in our prayer, it's a !ne thing.
n this life, our friends scold our devotion.
But, when you're through with laughing,
if you recognise their slander for the trickery it is,
it's a !ne thing.
Whatever is consolidated, trickery scatters.
t's a !ne thing, if everything is pleasure for
a mind which lacks desire for such frauds.
The body is born and dies - and nothing has been added.
f you exert yourself in faith to help all beings, it's a !ne thing.
With a mind as graceful as silk (since neither of us is a monk),
if we exert ourselves, without timidity,
in the activity of a thousand Buddhas, it's a !ne thing.
Escaping from the mind as from a spider's web,
may vanish into Sukhavati
and meet with the protecting lama.
As say, there is a myriad of similar texts in Danzanravjaa's output, each
of them exhorting his followers to treat one another as well as they would
treat themselves. What is explicit in his work, though, unlike in Dashbalbar's,
is the idea that behavior which transgresses this compassionate attitude is
behavior which is going to lead to misery in this world and the next. That
there might be far more explicit expositions of this realisation elsewhere
in Danzanravjaa's poetry is not an unreasonable expectation: after all,
Danzanravjaa was writing from a time and place in Mongolian history
where, unlike the Soviet-inspired revolutionary thought of the 1970s and
1980s during which Dashbalbar was writing, rebirth and the hell realms
were accepted as totally real and subject to experience. For Dashbalbar,
*"
as a modern man, formed by an understanding of Mongolian tradition and
culture framed within a scienti!c and materialist education, the nexus of
time and compassion was not necessarily a good rebirth on a physical level;
rather it manifested itself, both as the self-awareness of the virtuous person
and as the person at peace with themselves as they approacvhed the end
of their lives. n other words, the aspect of Dashbalbar's writing in which
love is encouraged as a human project is there both for the betterment of
society and for the betterment of individuals.
All this having been said, there are still of course contradictions in
Dashbalbar's approach to time, its direction and its universality. t is as
though, whilst consistently acknowledging the irreversability of time and the
fact that an individual would prefer (presumably) to die in a state of happiness
than of sadness, there still remains the melancholy of the passing of time.
But, of course, we should always keep in mind that Dashbalbar wrote the
poems in this book during his twenties, that he was still a very young man,
a very young poet; indeed, he was only forty-two at the time of his death. n
"All Things are Ful!lled in Time, we !nd the following stanzas:
Today am in love with this girl.
Tomorrow she will be more beautiful.
This night will not return to us, and shall kiss her, modestly.
The late "owers do not grow in the winter, nor will the days return.
Everything which happens this very day supports me with its poetry.
t touches the young man's !ne mind,
he is handsome beneath the moon.
But you, my dear girl, will be an old woman, leaning on a stick.
But only now, feel this wondrous beauty,
Only now, love this bright form.
Unforsaken in the mists of days to come,
stand amid today's broad gleam.
Here we see the realisation of time's passing together with the collapsing
of time into a moment, a singularity in which the experience of youth
is "unforsaken in the mist of days to come. t seems that, somehow, the
poet is here combining as perhaps he does throughout his poetry the
expression of love (both eros and agape), of compassion, of the passing
of time and of the unity which is an alternative realisation of the interface
*#
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
of time, space and love. This is a dif!cult admixture to keep a hold of, there
is such slippage and such uncertainty that it might fall from one's grasp at
any moment: nonetheless, it seems to me that Dashbalbar's intention is to
express, in as clear and honest a way as he can, a single experience of
the multifaceted, multidimensional universe in which we live, an experience
which links backwards through Gagarin and Tsiolkovski, Danzanravjaa
and Bruno, and forward into the vision of the young girl as an old woman,
leaning on a stick. And as we are reminded of this, we hear the words, "f
for no other reason, love one another!
Having looked at Dashbalbar's poetry through the prisms of human
experience and of time, we turn now to the wider world, and to his
relationship with Mongolian society. n particular, given his love for the
natural world, we should give careful thought to his treatment of the
nomadic culture from which the modern culture of Mongolia has grown.
t behoves me !rst to say that it is this aspect of his work which best
illustrates his friendhsip with Nyamsuren and Mend-Ooyo, both of whose
work celebrate the many faces of nature. Mend-Ooyo, the only one of
the trio who is still alive, continues to celebrate his own nomadic heritage
and his novel Golden Hill is an extended meditation on the landscape and
history and mythology of the area around the hill of the title, located in the
south-west of the country, in Dariganga aimag. Neither Nyamsuren nor
Mend-Ooyo have exhibited, either in their life or in their writing, the social
and political thrust which marked Dashbalbar's !nal years, but all three
express nomadism, and all that "ows from it, with a profound appreciation.
Mongolian society, prior to the 1921 revolution, was founded and based
upon nomadism, insofar as the majority of the population lived in gers,
tended livestock and moved from site to site throughout the year, according
to the seasons. This way of life has several consequences. First, of
course, the idea of home is very different from that experienced in a non-
nomadic, sedentary society. People horde and collect almost nothing
which has neither practical nor family signi!cance, meaning that they
have fewer personal possessions. The family is extended, extended even
to the animals and, in particular, to the horses, the horse having for many
centuries held a special place in Mongolian society. Family entertainment
is focussed around a few objects which are easily transported, and musical
entertainment generally constitutes either one solo performer or a singer
accompanied by one other instrument. Food is simple and based around
that which is to hand, namely the livestock and whatever they produce,
*$
mediated by a few readily available vegetables and little else. Alcohol
some of which comes also from the livestock, such as mare's milk - is
widely consumed. There is a deep connection to the earth and to the natural
world, as have already mentioned, and this extends to an association of
one's country with the idea of mother/origin.
This latter theme is at the center of Dashbalbar's poem "Motherland.
ndeed, the Mongolian title, "Ekh Oron, can mean either "motherland or
"land of origin, the word ekh meaning both "origin and "mother (though
mother in terms of origin, rather than in terms of one's biological mother,
for which the word eej is generally used). The entire poem is couched as
a kind of prayer to the land of the poet's birth, to Mongolia perhaps rather
than the speci!c place from which he comes (and for which the word nutag
would be used).
To read the poem, we could at most point substitute the word "mother
for "motherland, suggesting that for Dashbalbar the country of his birth,
of his mother and thus of his lineage, might somehow constitute a form of
what we might in English refer to as "Mother Earth. ndeed, this discourse
is closely related to pre-Buddhist shamanism, and parallels with Goddess
worship lie not too far from the surface. Right from the opening two lines
- " make obeisance to You, my divine motherland./ believe that the truth
dwells in the stones lying here and there we are before a godlike !gure.
As the poem develops, there are echoes of other (quasi-)religious texts
from other places and from other times. There are conceptual echoes of the
Psalms, perhaps, and of ancient Babylonian and Egyptian texts, and there
is also the idea that the Motherland will deliver the poet and in fact, all of
us from impurity:
Oh, my motherland, know the blazing, harsh !re to be You.
live my life, relying on the gentle breath within!
Oh, my motherland, know the pure bright air is Yours.
You penetrate me in the counting of my breaths!
Oh, my motherland! You come to us, changing into all things.
My way of life is Your deep joy.
try to !nd You in the rocks,
You stand up out of the world's vegetation.
To be of bene!t to all, You dwell in everything,
and You lead us from the path of wickedness.
The capitalisation of You is present in the original and, although have not
read any Mongolian translation of the Bible, my feeling is that Dashbalbar
*%
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
is, consciously or not, drawing from sources other than his own imagination
as how best to express his feeling for his Motherland as a kind of salvatrix.
That this text is panentheist ("You dwell in everything) points simply to
the ancient approach to the earth, to the universe as a whole, which is
found in Mongolian shamanic texts of a much earlier era. Dashbalbar, like
his friends Nyamsuren and Mend-Ooyo, has in his heart an apprehension
of the living universe, a realisation of the wild, gentle, radient, violent,
gentle, all-encompassing and all-embracing principle which is traditionally
associated with the Mother. The panentheism expressed by Dashbalbar,
however, is motivated by a peculiarly Buddhist intention, "to be of bene!t to
all: this is at once a direct reference to one of the basic vows of Vajrayana
Buddhism, as well as to the general theme which have suggested for
Dashbalbar's work, and which we !nd in "Love One Another, My People.
The place of nomadic society in Dashbalbar's work is not as obvious
as it is, for instance in Mend-Ooyo's. Dashbalbar does not talk about
conversations around the hearth, nor does he discuss the movement of
livestock and the packing up of the ger and the family possessions before
a move. For Dashbalbar, nomadism is held more as the expression of the
landscape itself: the nomadic perception moves across the landscape,
across the hills and through the skies, !xing upon ideas or physical objects
for a while, before moving on once again.
The !nal piece in The River Flows Gently, " am Slowly Living in the
Perfect World, is a sequence of poems and contemplative essays on
landscape and emotion. Before address the issues of nomadic society
present in this work, want brie"y to touch upon the title, which is also the
title of the sixth and !nal part of the sequence.
The atmosphere conveyed through the idea of "slowly living might
suggest a kind of Thoreau-like "back to nature theme, where one lives life
in contrast to an urban craziness, sensitive to and living with the rhythms
of nature. n some ways, this is precisely what Dashbalbar appears to
addressing, but his intention feel is also to preserve his own continual
(re)connection with the natural history (and the historical nature) of
Mongolia, the country of his lineage and of his people.
n Mongolian, the "perfect world of the title is "ulemjin orchlon, which
for me carries a very strong echo of Danzanravjaa's most famous poem,
"Perfect Qualities, "ulemjin chanar. !nd it hard to believe that Dashbalbar
did not have this connection in mind: Danzanravjaa's poem was addressed
to his belovud wife and speaks of the emotional and spiritual effects which
her "perfect qualities engender in him. The same is true of this "perfect
world of which Dashbalbar writes: this, his book's !nal meditation, presents
*&
us with ideas concerning hills and rivers and lakes and love and music
before returning to the title and to a memory, a vision of a happy family at
rest in this perfect world.
We can thus perhaps see the title as more than a summary of the text.
n some ways, we might understand it as being for Dashbalbar the very
statement which gives rise to the text, a thought, a seed from which the
words of exposition grow and develop over the pages which follow, in
a manner then not unlike the grasses in the "Grass triptych which we
examined earlier.
f we turn to the text of the sequence itself, we can again see Dashbalbar
intensely observing the natural world and its interplay with the human world.
n each section, we are offered an example of how the landscape presents
itself or, perhaps more accurately, how it is perceived by the human eye
and we are thereby encouraged to enter into our own contemplation.
One very human theme runs throughout " am Slowly Living in the Perfect
World, and that is the theme of a beautiful woman, presumably the reality
or the memory of Dashbalbar's own lover. For instance, in the third part
"Lakes he says: "The beauty of Lake Ganga by night is ravishing, like a
woman. The lovely river is like a !ne lover, it holds thought, it gives pleasure
to the mind. The stars shine in the waters of the lake as though in the sky
and the expression of their beautiful bodies was the sound of poetry, as
wondrous as the girls of my homeland.
"At night, amidst the breathing of my Ganga and the whispers of the
young couple beneath the red willows on its bank, in this world of dreams
take my hat and walk away. The Ganga is really one of the beautiful waters
of the world.
Such highly sensuous and emotional thoughts "ow right through this
sequence of poems and essays, and while the feeling is of an intense
and powerful sweetness, it is, strangely, in no wise overwhelming. We !nd
this also though in different ways and to different degrees - in the work
of Nyamsuren and Mend-Ooyo. t would seem that the experience of the
stretch of the landscape is, for Dashbalbar, not the crass experience of
the physical body of a woman, but a metageography of the human body
as much as of the body of the earth. n this way, it is possible to conceive
of the poet's relationship with the landscape, and his movement over the
landscape, just as nomadic caravans move over the landscape with care
and respect and with an intimate, sensitive feeling.
So would suggest that " am Slowly Living in the Perfect World is an
exemplary text through which to understand Dashbalbar's relationship to
the nomadic experience. t seems to me in fact simply to be the experience
*'
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
of traversing the land with care and with love, of living with the landscape
in a natural and intimate way. As Dashbalbar says in the !rst part of the
text, "Mountains, " knew that, upon a thoroughbred horse, as it whinnied
at the beautiful mountains, visited the meadow of dreams, and raised the
pennant, splashing in the soft rain of memory. And so, during my life, gave
my heart to the mountains and the mountains' peaceful nature was revealed
to me. This last sentence, in which he "gave my heart to the mountains,
holds the language of marriage, of commitment to something from which
one cannot be parted.
n the closing paragraphs of the text, we read the following: " am fully
preoccupied with love for all that know within myself, and that celebrate
in the shining sun. Though the sun rises every day, the perfect world
beneath does not appear old to me!
" am in a hurry slowly to watch the blueness of the sky, slowly to listen
to the whispering of the rivers, and slowly to live among people, How can
people, the sun, the birds, trees and waters be too lovely? t is a crime
to live a few years amidst this perfection! This is not greed, rather it is an
attempt to feel completely the loveliness of existence. With the memory
of what we have discussed before, believe that we can again see here
Dashbalbar's feeling for the landscape of Dariganga, for the family
and for the people which he so loves and for the feeling of profound
(inter)relationship with the cosmos which runs through the poems and
essays of The River Flows Gently.
To conclude this section, want to look at the way in which nomadism
has been altered by the gradual urbanisation of the population of Mongolia.
After all, more than half the population now (fall 2007) lives in Ulaanbaatar,
which leaves only a minority as genuine nomads, and therefore perhaps
rede!nes Mongolia as something approaching a sedentary society. n terms
of the previous discussion about Dashbalbar's understanding of nomadism
and its (and his) relationship to the Mongolian landscape, what issues
does this raise in relation to his subsequent status as a popular leader and
opposition politician?
That he was a popular politician is uncontested: thousands turned up to
his funeral and his death was greeted by a kind of national mourning. t
is also uncontested that he campaigned against international intervention
into Mongolia and for the self-determination of the Mongolian people. This
attitude of cultural and political self-suf!ciency is an integral part of the
Mongolian psyche, with its roots in the Chinggisid society of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. t is thus a part of a poetic heritage which has
survived over the centuries, in gradually developing forms, into the present
!)
day. Dashbalbar's poetic work is rooted in these literary and cultural
traditions, albeit in a highly personalised form, and this is found throughout
the poems of The River Flows Gently, as throughout all his work.
What we do not hear in Dashbalbar's work and what is curiously
lacking from contemporary Mongolian literature as a whole is a desire to
return to a Golden Age, a dissatisfaction with the current situation and a
romanticised view of perfect days of yore. Rather, what Dashbalbar shows
us is the effect upon his psyche of the memories which the landscape holds
for him. f we again look at the title of " am Slowly Living in the Perfect
World, we see that it indicates the perfection of the world in which the poet
is living, that is to say, the continual present is perfect for him. What is this
idea of perfection, then? What is it that he would be seeking of!ce in order
to change just a few years later? For me, the main thrust of Dashbalbar's
writings, both before and after the political changes in Mongolia during
the early 1990s, is that it is the surface elements of society which need to
change, but not those deep elements which, like the hills and the rivers,
have remained powerful and faithful for centuries, the homes of the
ancestors and the source of comfort and wisdom in equal measure.
So this is the love which lies at the heart of The River Flows Gently.
Dashbalbar intends, it seems to me, to expose to his readers the presence
of the deep and truthful love which he himself feels himself receiving from
the natural features of the landscape, from the ancestors who dwell in those
natural features, from the Buddhas and local spirits who dwell in the air and
in the trees and in the grasses, and from those creatures and people which
are so close to him. By showing us his feelings and his response to these
things, he wants believe to take to heart the experience of this love, which
he made manifest six years before the publication of this book, in the poem
with which began this exposition. Dashbalbar's son Gangabaatar wrote
me that his father once told him, "Poetry is godliness. True poets are gods
within. Batkhuyag, too, writes that Dashbalbar said to him, "All things in the
world are art. Not one thing on the earth is not art. f you do not sense this
art, it is pointless to write poetry. Moreover, poetry is attitude. The person
who expresses attitude in a poem is a real poet. n many ways, think,
Dashbalbar wanted to see all things as good, and all people as being good:
it was only when he could see for himself that there were problems that he
decided to take action and become involved with politics. But at this point
in his life, in 1986, his political career was still some years in the future and
he was still able to publish The River Flows Gently, with its visions, its vast
skies, its profound emotions and its powerful, heartfelt love.
!(
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
This being a translation, it is hard to convey the prosodic, lexical and
phonemic nature of the original text. To hear the original would be of course
to hear the poet himself, his ideas presented to us through the sonic and
the visual aspects of the written word.
Nonetheless, believe it would be useful to look brie"y at Dashbalbar's
poems from the viewpoint of the visual and the sonic. Even if this be only
descriptive, it will at least engage the reader in some kind of understanding
of the poems which Dashbalbar actually wrote, the words which he
deliberately placed in a speci!c order, rather than the translations which
have crafted, with a greater or a lesser level of accuracy and faithfulness,
from his words.
suggest we approach the poems along two separate, though connected,
trajectories, the structural and the semantic. From the structural point
of view, Mongolian poetry retains, on what would suggest is a far more
conscious level than does the poetry of the indo-European western
community, the mnemonic devices with which the oral (epic) poetry was
composed during the pre- and semi-literate periods of the country's history.
That is to say, when a poet chooses to use a particular structure, it is quite
clear what he or she is seeking through this choice to emphasise.
Simply on a visual level, there is the repetition of initial consonants,
within a line or else in the !rst word of each line in a single verse. This
latter is known as the head (tolgoi) and is frequently used alongside a word
repeated at the end of every line, the tail (suul). To look at much Mongolian
poetry, right up into the present day, we see the head/tail technique
frequently in evidence. Dashbalbar is no exception, although he, like many
contemporary authors, tends to use the head with either no tail at all or
else with a modi!ed tail, in the form either of a grammatical ending or of
something akin to an extended abab structure.
Of course, in the late twentieth century, Mongolia was a literate society,
which no longer required the form of oral literature in order for the culture
to call to mind its history and its traditions. Thus, just as with the iambic
pentameter in English verse, the head/tail structure has become a kind
of formula, whose contemporary usage is different from its usage in pre-
modern eras.
Dashbalbar's use of this device, combined with the alliteration which is
also found in traditional verse, is frequently affected by its inclusion in lines
of unusual length. Consider, for instance, the poem "An Autumn Evening.
The structure of the poem is such that the translation reads almost like a
piece of poetic prose, rather than like a piece of verse. But in the original,
there are passages where the initial letter is repeated over several lines,
!*
including one such passage where the intital G is repeated eight times in
ten lines. That the lines are so long, though, sometimes around twenty
syllables over several lines, means that the rhythm ordinarily set up by the
repeated initial letter is suf!ciently weakened so as to be almost lost.
Dashbalbar's approach to this structural device is unusual. Because he
so rarely employs the tail device, the verse is at once given a subtlety both
through the temporal gaps between line initials and through the meandering
"ow of the long lines. The !nal effect in these poems, with their long and
many lines, is of a river of words, creating and linking together a series of
ideas and moving slowly towards a conclusion.
The one poem in this collection where there is a signi!cantly different
structure is "A Man, where the repetition of " am a man punctuates the
text throughout. The words in the original show far stronger phonemic
qualities (voiced stop and voiceless fricative) than in the translation
(nasals), but, through repetition, the concept nevertheless retains its power.
"A Man could be described, not simply as a poem, but as a kind of
chant, where the repetition of line initials, of syntax, of alliteration and of
conceptual material becomes a kind of mantra, a text pointing to the reality
which Dashbalbar wishes to expose but somehow enclosing the reader in
the complexity and holism of this reality's manifestation.
Just as it is impossible of course consequently and successfully
to discuss all the poetry in this book from the viewpoint of one, or even
a few, individual poems, so Dashbalbar's essays are also both similar to
one another and yet examples of a single contemplative and analytical
approach to the subject matter.
That Dashbalbar was !rst and foremost a poet can be heard in the way
his prose sounds, his texts particularly the shorter ones - are almost
prosepoems. For instance, the sequence of !ve texts beginning with "A
Bright Melody is full of the "ow and repetition which we have already seen
is characteristic of his poetry. n particular, "Omens and "When the Moon
Rises. use alliteration and internal rhyme and the oneiric patterning of the
rising of the moon and the mystery and the sounds of the night to conjure
in the mind of the listener, of the one experiencing through the poet's words
the poet's apprehension of the world, the melancholy and the strange
pleasure of this experience.
t often seems to me that these short meditative essays show to the
fullest extent the ways in which Dashbalbar seeks in his use of phonemic
and syntactical structure to lead the reader the reader reading proactively
and deliberately into the comingled landscapes of dreams and visions and
hills and heaven and the barking of dogs, and in this way also to reveal, in
!!
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
the sounds of the words chosen and in the images placed before our eyes,
the universe in which he lives, with its common humanity, its sadness and
its joys and its unseen topographies of the heart.
For Dashbalbar is a stylist simply in order to convey his message. He
can in no way be seen as a postmodernist, nor as a poet working with the
concrete wordness of words: rather, his project as see it is to create a
feeling, an atmosphere in which the reader can look deeper inside him- or
herself and grow more aware of the relationship, in the particular case of
this sequence of prosepoems, between the world without and the world
within.
n the longer prose pieces, which are too long to be prosepoems and
exhibit far more of an essay structure, the tone is still one of contemplation,
of philosophical interrogation. "Spring's Braid, or the Lyrical Precipice, for
instance, moves across vast swathes of human experience, historical and
cultural and societal and political, but its simple message is found, !nally,
in the closing paragraph. Although Dashbalbar lived for another !fteen
years following the completion of this essay, although he spent much of that
time involved with the democracy movement in Mongolia and in creating
a new society for his people, and although he found himself in a position
both of authority and of great vulnerability, still believe that his legacy,
his message and his philosophy of struggle and self-awareness can be
summed up in the concluding paragraph of this text:
"So only when people come together do they come together, and in
separation alone is their day of separation. Such things are not in fact
compounded by every situation which has ever been created, but by the
primacy of the sun beyond. When you do not believe in genuine love, you
imagine it to be a story and, when you do not believe in true friendship,
you laugh about it. But, at that moment, please turn away from yourself
and consider how you have fallen from the human level into that of the
animals. used to be fond of shouting in front of people, but now have
grown to silent contemplation. Tomorrow shall start on the road to become
a genuine person.
!"
HEAVEN
a melodic fantasy
Oh Heaven!
An insigni!cant creature, stop turning through the breadth of the great
steppe, call only upwards, try only to gain what desire and, beneath
the nighttime skies, am affected by the power of the small secret. How to
measure that what is limited is without limit, that that which is bounded is
without bounds?
Beneath my feet, the globe of the world suddenly disappears, there is no
above or beneath, no west or east. n the boundless darkness, the stars'
dull glow weakly "ashes, as though they were communicating with one
another with their small white rays. Nothing can be felt in the darkness,
everything is held in a strange and silent melody, my body weakens in the
pulsating of the universe.
Beneath the sky of a hundred nights, gently dream. Explanations in this
mysterious life, like ideas, are not under my control and, while am not
affected by the domination of heaven, which is for nothing and for no-one,
still am aware of the open space. Penetrating the deep secret of heaven,
moving outwards through the doors of the universe, and opening the
endlessly lovely, undying, everlasting and peaceful world, the stars rushed
in song through the rays of the open space, the entire world resounds as a
single musical body.
Oh Heaven!
What is it that is stored up in this world, which we call eternal and
deathless? An ancient town disappears into the dust of ages, the great
khaans who shook the world are transmuted into motes of dust, everything
is sunk into the ocean of forgetting, all bodies are disintegrated, but the
eternal sky has remained. Once, it was stretched out as though nothing
existed, it was aware of neither end nor beginning.
have come into this world looking only upon you. have sated myself,
swallowing your clear blue, have come to !ll my eyes and to absorb myself
!#
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
into your body. But your greatness is not contained, even in wisdom, even
in mind and heart, even in watching eyes..
But, although come close to you through your boundaries, do not reach
you. n my simplicity and nanvet, feel that am swelling as drink of the
waters of the mirage which is an ocean.
Oh Heaven!
Nothing in this world fully contains you. But you hold yourself within
yourself, these strange imaginings appear like a dream to me and, if make
real these imaginings, they are weaker than intelligence.
do not feel this, neither literally nor !guratively.
Oh Heaven!
You may think that clouds are not "oating spaces, but how can you not
notice that they are substantially present?
f we refer to things which do not disappear as Truth, this is you. All things
which disappears are not true, they remain only temporarily, and imagine
the truth as nothing other than this!
You, though, as opposed to the sun, stars, people, creatures, seas and
oceans, are the one thing which we know to be upon the earth which does
not disappear.
n your inconceivable presence, feel small and, although know that
the milliards and milliards of bright years spread outwards, that the sky
is without completion, yet, in the depths of my despair, take from you
interminable power. This sky alone created me. For millions and millions of
years, it has kept me in its belly in various forms, perceived myself once,
in the brilliance of light, standing bodily upon the broad universe, preparing
the moments of the future, come into the world.
Oh Heaven!
stand and bow before your great power, which encompasses the
minuscule stars which shine in the inconceivably broad sphere, the vast
sun, the wise people.
Although we perish beneath the eternal skies, unsounding and with
great power, still my trust in what seek and in how live is in the Truth, in
Heaven alone! n the small life of a human being, with all its amusements,
what might we say? Only the pen, however, demolishes you through tirades
and cursing!
!$
We all feel your great characteristics unmoving, unbreaking, soundless
and unnoticing - and we seek from ourselves the beginning of puri!cation,
the meaning of greatness and of standing eternal!
Oh Heaven!
We trust, !rst, that you understand all the behavior of this spinning world,
that humans are come into being as creatures, and we trust that you are
the only witness to our virtue and wickedness, eternally watching each and
every person, your skyblue eyes unblinking.
When once the earth conversed with the sky, at !rst there was not one
person who said it was a secret.
Only the sky, which itself was clearer than clear, was more secret than
secret, a bright light which made the darkness visible. When was in the
depths of despair, it empowered me and protected me on summer nights
upon the great steppes!
listen for the breaking of the bow, in my experience of the grass and
vegetation, stepping beneath the starry book that is the sky, loose myself
from the narcotic effects of the passion of a summer night, and so my heart
is free. As though have gone out beneath the sky, taste the sky through
its hidden meaning, proud of being called a descendent of children, the
most powerful of creatures.
Oh Heaven! The children whom you have created struggle, undying,
across the extent of space. They struggle with the deep secrets, century
after century, they are burnt like Bruno, drawing a bright line across the
eternal darkness of the world.
We travel within the great belly of Heaven, in the spherical cradle of the
world, we remain in the unlit belly, we go out into the illuminated skies, we
come together in boundless freedom..
Oh Heaven!
n the rhythm of my life, in the deep secret of experiencing life, in the
measure of my every step, kneel and pray beneath You, before the great
sun.
The word human is as imposing to hear as Heaven. Truly, its divine
beginnings exists among humans and so kneel down to creatures, who
are the children of Heaven.
Oh Heaven!
!%
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
am standing below the eternally skyblue, silent, boundless, unnoticing,
undying, unbreaking, worthy and majestic, pure and precious, immanent,
beautiful Heaven. To me, it is something to admire, to strive for, to rely upon
and to trust. do not even know how to name it. When we study it, we know
it as the Heavens, but the truth shines clearly in my mind!
watch the silent sky for a while.
watch the horses and cattle amid the smoke.
watch the clouds moving in columns, and the gers.
watch the ordinary blue of the bare mountains.
am amused by how the cute little rabbits
stand up amid the vegetation, and
realise where my ancestors received the power to defeat Death.
gaze my life through, but am not bored.
And oh, when we have the Heavens, with their white clouds,
peaceful
impressive
borderless
utterly blue
what is there to fear?
Beneath Heaven, with its extraordinary power, does not the one who
loves life
spend but one existence as a human or animal?
And now, as though the ancestors are inclining their heads,
we receive support from above, and
our descendents set up camp beneath
the peaceful, fearless, eternal blue.
The distant Heavens are dwelling within our hearts.
And so do not feel hat am broken away from Heaven.
When we are sad and sheltering,
Heaven is so close, watching the people and the animals!
Above the mountains, above the green vegetation,
above the fire's flame, above the waves upon the ocean,
above the land, above everything, it strives
onwards!
And, striving onwards above every creature in this world,
!&
we say it is united with the endless, beginningless breadth!
n times of difficulty and danger, only Heaven pacifies the mind,
taking pity with its deathless
unvanishing
truthful and
eternal silence.
Oh, Heaven is watching us!
As though gazing at my ancestors in the distance of years,
it inclines its head above us, peaceful, noble and undying,
as though clearing away my every error and wickedness!
When my ancestors went out, resolved to fight,
they received their power from the distant blue sky.
Now feel the pounding of my heart.
Beneath the sky, gently watching me since was in my cradle,
have grown up to live a life of lies.
My descendents will look up and read upon the skyblue pages of eternity.
The distant mirror is untouched, they are watching as judge my life!
1983-1985
!'
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
LIFE WAS HERE BEFORE US
The mountains, the rivers and the hills remain to us,
and wise people proceed from the world.
While the autumn days, and spring winds, and gazelles, and willows
live their lives, watch their memories, and feel love.
And we remember upon the sunny earth, in whom we place our trust,
how we counted them, the leaves falling,
moving in the far distance.
The people who hold the earth for posterity were coming back,
like dust amongst the stars!
On the earth of those who are returned, of all who have come here,
am living in laughter and in tears!
Natsagdorj has kept for me the rays of the silver moon, and
Ravjaa has given to me the sound of the river.
wade through the grasses
in the land which my ancestors bequeathed to me.
live upon this earth, as though enjoying the land have inherited.
And shall come back, to create the glorious earth,
and leave it to my children.
rest upon the shores of the ocean bequeathed to me by Homer,
and listen to the crashing of the beautiful waves.
n a hollow of skyblue smoke, bequeathed to me by Zanabazar,
watch a man jogging on horseback along the road.
n the shadow of the white clouds, the tigers bequeathed to me by Einstein,
love the Himalayas, praised by the old ndian sage Tagore.
Glorious Sukhbaatar comes into the world,
the Mongolian nation rises anew.
We take nothing for ourselves,
we make fine gifts to our descendents on their return..
Zanabazar has left behind his genius,
cast in bronze for a hundred thousand years,
revealing the noble form and beauty of those
who shine like the Buddha!
Sunny days, cloudy days, stooked grass and white gers, low wooden buildings,
")
magnificent pyramids, the mausoleum of the Taj Mahal,
hollows full of violets, peaks of eternal snows,
the blue stars of night, the closeness of Nirvana,
the poems of Rudak, Persian carpets
people pass from the sunny world,
leaving all these behind.
We keep our trust in the four great oceans and the five great continents,
but our descendents, left behind upon the earth,
will praise in wonder the art of centuries,
made by the body, created by talent,
the mastery of coming into being,
the wisdom of return!
We keep for ourselves the honor and the wisdom
of love and longing, of forests and of meadows!
And we keep for ourselves the moon, the sun and space, and
everything created by humans throughout a million years!
We'll carry on our backs the entire burden of the world,
we'll take the world across the universe!
Upon this earth, in which we place our trust,
we gather our ancestors' wisdom of a thousand years,
and they are joined with us,
and we govern the world through which we move!
We are waiting for the mountains, the rivers and the hills,
for wise people to come from the world!
We are waiting for them all.!
20 iv 85
"(
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
FREEDOM
Later generations travel along the road of past eras.
t was destroyed for our sakes a thousand years ago..
Having first come into being, they later strove for freedom,
they have pursued freedom since times gone by..
Though exhausted, these people and animals have not given in,
they move from the battle to the fight,
they do not die for their own sakes!
The bud remains, just as when autumn leaves fall,
and silence dissolves into the freedom.
And, when the ancestors were no more, then we came.
And, after have gone, then my descendents will come.
My sunny world turns around in space.
The changing customs create the circumstance,
and even dust in a pitcher is part of what makes the earth.
We may certainly walk upon this sleeping earth,
and our elders have lived here, vigilant and aware.
Though they have spilt their blood, they have not sold their freedom,
and the sons of famous men may certainly live.
Through death and birth, Mother Earth has waited for us,
love the genius of my generation!
Divine Bruno, liberated Spartacus, fearless Sukh,
determined Gagarin, Jeanne d'Arc from so far away
they are all my people!
Bruno burnt like a lotus flame, discovering the freedom of the mind,
gazing coolly upon us from the depths of the stars.
Spartacus offered up his youth in battle, and
even now dwells in my body and mind..
And Gagarin, who flew to freedom in the realm of skies,
and Ravjaa, the great and wise man of letters, these
were the golden limbs, the distant parts of our lives!
They were born for our sakes, we who had not come into being!
They did not do nor break just one thing in this world.
f they had caused harm their lives would have been lost.
"*
Children, grain and books are contained in my freedom,
always they make us hard, like strong iron.
Let the power of the ocean, the power of men, the power of birds,
the power of animals
enrich the freedom of all things upon the divine world!
Better to be dead tomorrow than be today without freedom!
Better to die standing up than to live on your knees!
Until my life is finished, shall remain true
to the legacy bequeathed to me by my ancestors!
When the knife is brandished against the grey hair of Mother Earth,
will stand, like Manlai Van, facing the mockers,
and shall die standing, like our ancestors.
My freedom will remain!
1984
"!
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
MOTHERLAND
make obeisance to You, my divine motherland.
believe that the truth dwells in the stones lying here and there.
My way of life bespeaks Your joy.
make obeisance to Your greatness every day!
go to You in the counting of my breaths,
look upon You when my eyes are closed.
do good for Your benefit.
am shameful before You for my wrong actions!
Lying upon the snow on winter days,
see the fine snow, falling and glistening in colorful lines,
and the many animals around me here are Yours!
Now am seeing everything through Your eyes.
My motherland, with Your power permeating me, am empowered.
With Your kind love come into me, am learning to love everything.
Oh, my motherland, know the blazing, harsh fire to be You.
live my life, relying on the gentle breath within!
Oh, my motherland, know the pure bright air is Yours.
You penetrate me in the counting of my breaths!
Oh, my motherland! You come to us, changing into all things.
My way of life is Your deep joy.
try to find You in the rocks,
You stand up out of the world's vegetation.
To be of benefit to all, You dwell in everything,
and You lead us from the path of wickedness.
All the colors and melodies of the world bespeak You.
As You protect my health,
grant all powerless creatures the magic of Your love!
Truly, the world has limits, but its qualities are eternal.
t is forever undying, forever unbecoming,
it stretches boundless in all directions,
its center rests at every point.
The motivations for all that takes birth
do not balance completely, but
""
make obeisance to You, my motherland,
You straighten out the body's wrong and right!
My savior, my purifying father,
Bless me with your golden hands, grant me with love all that desire!
May You be my eternal and virtuous companion.
When see the shape of wickedness in me, may flee immediately.
When hear my flattering voice, may destroy it,
and may shun the fearful beasts when
cannot make a sound.
May all sickness avoid me,
and similarly may draw sickness out.
You penetrate me in the counting of my breaths,
and watch You when my eyes are closed.
May my wise thoughts please you more and more,
and may the root quality be the quality of humanity!
Everywhere spread my motherland's beauty, her eternal qualities,
help bring pleasure to the many in this world!
f my body, thoughts, my heart and all my work be Yours,
my motherland, then You are mine,
and live in your shining light!
9 ii 84
"#
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
A MAN
All the rivers of the world are flowing around me.
All the mountains of the world are in my possession.
n the morning, the blue whale in the ocean chill floats after me,
the sky stretches itself completely,
and a great wind arises..
carry away every peak, my footsteps hard upon the Himalayas.
Centuries passed when wandered without food to eat.
Centuries passed when fought with sword in hand.
became ancient Homer and conceived the liad.
With great Leonardo fashioned La Gioconda.
was burnt with Bruno, his force was leonine.
proclaimed myself through centuries and centuries of lives,
raised up pyramids in the world of beasts, for years struggled,
smiled Gagarin's smile among the distant stars.
am A MAN!
built the Taj Mahal, it lives up to its great name,
blew wind through a flute upon a loaded cart,
and took a man's name in every century.
was not an animal!
The tundra is watching me. Africa is watching me.
A Tungusic metor fell, was its witness. Paris hanged me with Villon.
have flown through the endless universe on the round ship of the world,
have travelled for many, many eons am A MAN!
am black-skinned, yellow-skinned, white, and,
with a plough, break the steppe of the entire world, of me.
And while, in Mongolia, taly, Russia, taly, Niger,
am known by many, many names,
am A MAN!
am very young, kissing my love in the shade of a lime tree,
am very old, turning the pages of an ancient book,
giving out my wisdom,
am a little boy, sliding along on a sledge..
am A MAN!
"$
am a girl, running about with her hair bound in pigtails.
am a lover, going after a married man.
am a mother, giving birth to many,
many children, an offering to the world.
am a woman, living until her hair turns grey.
am a doctor, a judge or a wise man,
have a hundred million names,
but in this grey world, am A MAN!
have been called Ovid, Spartacus, Galileo, Zanabazar, Pascal,
but in this sunny world, have been a man,
and have lived as a man!
am deathlessly, eternally A MAN!
die in America!
am born in Africa!
am like someone in a story, A MAN!
n England, drive a car!
n Albania, herd sheep!
am A MAN!
Through my body courses Homer's blood.
Like Poseidon, rule the rivers and the oceans.
Like Apollo, know the southern
and the northern limits of the desert and the steppe.
am nourished by the wisdom of Aeschylus,
dream the dreams of Einstein.
On the lonely steppe plant grains, among animals tame the lions,
n the deserts of Arabia dig a well, occupy the whole world..
From the great to the ordinary,
n whatever way, am A MAN!
"t will not kill me, it will not have victory over me.
Millions and millions of times am born in the sunny world.
The voices of a million infants, barely born, complete the world.
A thousand thousand ships sail on the seven seas.
A horseman, standing in the stirrups, races down the path of the stars,
galloping his knowledge through four thousand years,
and am making food in the fire's heart,
stretching my hands out to the stars and planets.
Outside, in the ger, here and there,
dwelling in every center of the earth, am
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
A MAN!
eat a slice of bread, drink a bowl of tea, do my work,
travel on a distant road, singing and carrying my backpack.
am A MAN! like to get wet in the snow, to stand out in the rain.
am A MAN! like to read a brand new book, to kiss a woman's lips.
am A MAN! praise myself, criticize myself, write songs about myself.
am A MAN! mock myself, am amazed by my rottenness,
smile like the Mona Lisa,
am fat and skinny and old and young and healthy and sick!
am born in France and Vietnam,
am born in Hiroshima and Ulaanbaatar,
am born everywhere, am living everywhere.
am A MAN!
n the morning, wash my face with the water of the chill oceans,
rub my body with sunshine.
By day, wade the Atlantic ocean, cut the meadowgrass, load the car.
n the evening, fly by plane from Havana to Mexico.
For a million million years, have had no spare time.
am A MAN, filled with this world!
The world is filled with me, lie down and hold the universe!
am A MAN!
Like a bird sitting on its eggs,
in my own world, am THE MASTER!
Dense falls the rain as cry upon the world,
and dew collects on the petals of colorful flowers..
jump from the eternal snowpeaks of the Himalayas,
swim the seven gentle seas.
And when come home, sleep amid the scent of the dungfire's blue smoke.
As hold the distant stars, and embrace the entire world,
contain within myself the many unimagined, unsolved secrets,
stand there, my child in one hand, a flower in the other.
am A MAN!
20 iv 85
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ALLEGRO
dedicated to my teachers B Yavuukhulan and M Tsedendorj
People do not die in the sunny world.
They come flying back, like birds in autumn.
go out onto the deep mistbound steppe, and
the springtime pasque flower is blossoming again.
gaze overhead at the sky, united with
the breadth of those eternal blue Heavens.
The endless and beginningless glimmer in the rivers' patterns
flow gently in the heart of the yearning world.
Someone paces down the path through the world,
another takes care of the branches stroked by their hands.
But, waiting for the people to return,
the stars above the earth spend the cool night in silence.
People are sitting around the fire, sharing stories,
making music on the fiddle, telling lies from truth.
Those who are forever gone return to them,
and they know that, come evening,
they will be living once again in song.
watch how the people bring the headstrong white horses
of the day and the night rushing into the wide world.
n the morning, on the ancient meadows, the girls gather flowers,
and wonder at the desire,
glistening in the dew upon their feet.
Bruno comes at dusk from antiquity to open the door.
That which has burnt him no longer illuminates others.
Silently, he stands at the threshold, his mantle sags around him.
His eyes are thoughtful, like two stars falling and glimmering..
The people are coming back after a thousand thousand years,
whispering to us words read from the pages of the eternal book.
Shining within me are the wondrous rays of these people,
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
living again in my thoughts through the book held in my hand.
We are the continuing memory of those who are no longer here!
What an incomparable memorial to them are we during our lives!
They leave the shining world and return through us,
living as before, beneath the shining sun..
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SPRING'S BRAID, OR THE LYRICAL PRECIPICE
a portrait for D Bor and J Gombojav
n the scent of a springtime wind, there is a seed waiting one day to
bud, hidden on the branch of a springtime tree. Day after day, the warm
breath of the sun comes closer and ,when it appears, imagine it as though
born again upon the earth, it occupies the mind's thoughts and the body's
pulsating, and begin this day to keep note.
As a result of our discussion, the thought came to me that these ups and
downs, all things which pain and concern and please my mind, are here
collected and placed before you in a form which is not quite a poem!
watch how the people round about me live, how they love, what they
do, it's fascinating, it's like a movie, it's as if am come upon the earth from
somewhere, in order to get to know these people..
But, that notwithstanding, as watch someone among the many who are
unknown to me, there is something interesting in the faces which pass me
by. And when look at a face which will never again see, at that moment
in fact it is as though something is born, desirous of looking upon that form.
Reading a beautiful poem, it is in fact as though something is born, desirous
of reading it, am happy as though have received an immeasurably great
reward. go to the riverbank and dip my foot in, and feel in my body the
river, cool and clear, and sit there smiling as though am being tickled.
The sunlight turns the deep waters yellow and, from time to time, there are
glistening ripples of gold and think my feet are dipped in golden waters
and, this being so, it is in fact as though something is born, desirous..
n such millions and millions of moments does my life consist, each
moment is an unrepeated pattern, think, as though dedicated to
insigni!cant me. There is no-one living around me now who was born two
thousand years ago, a hundred years ago, or who will be born a million
years, three hundred years from now. Through people can understand
life, know from them gossip, and love, and fame, the separation of death,
and happiness. And come alongside each one of them upon the earth,
as though predestined by the limitless universe, they quarrel with me, they
bring me happiness, and come to love these people as my source of pain
and pleasure. Today, appear on the road and, among these eight million
people, let alone among almost !ve billion people, will not try to !nd that
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girl who, smiling, passed me by. But a thousand thousand years from now,
it will have been as though this slight form for which am searching were
approaching..And so our paths will cross amid the limitless universe, like
a moment on Tver Boulevard..
have waited for a million million years in order to see and welcome
the Buddha-like form which is the arrangement of that which is beautiful
in the human world. t came into this world, and could hardly look upon
this extraordinary person who was like a lightning "ash..n fact it was
as though the object of my entire life had been to look upon her.. was
amazed, feel in my body that this single moment was the equivalent of
many thousands of years. But it was all a lie! For me, things of beauty do
not come to an end. Yet another beautiful thing was being revealed. A few
steps away, the Pushkin Memorial was waiting for me.
Above me the sky is shining, over there looms the Russia Cinema. The
streaming fountain glistens in the sun and a girl is placing a "ower at bronze
Pushkin's feet. From high up, Pushkin looks down, gazing sadly at the girl.
Will he come down from his plinth to kiss the gentle hand which picked the
"ower?
Strange it is how, as though tired of fame,
he holds his palm against his heart.
He wishes to bow to Mother Russia,
and even this wish is ful!lled in his heart.
Does he know this verse of mine? Nowadays, Russia bows to Pushkin.
On the plinth, where he has stood, without moving, for a hundred years, he
is become a symbol of the majesty and wisdom of the Russian people. The
Russian people would be inconceivable without Pushkin, it is inconceivable
to imagine people and animals without Pushkin. We !nd ourselves
transmitted through Pushkin, and Pushkin represents the ultimate in human
talent, the beauty within humanity, he shows through himself the "ame of
the mind. n revering Pushkin, mankind reveres itself. This man Pushkin is
able to represent his people, he is able to meld with his people's elegance,
their particular qualities and their faults. f you would embody the Russian
people in a single person, the image which is able to express their !re, their
talent, their characteristics reveals itself as Pushkin. Pushkin was already
able to show the people, transmitted through himself, and thus it is obvious
that he was also able to show humanity!
The reason for this is that the Russian people are one part of humanity.
f you would know the heart and mind of the people, you need to know
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Pushkin. And, if a person comes from another planet and would know
humanity, it is necessary for them to know Pushkin. Humanity's pride is not
limited to one race or to one country, and we, mankind, say that we will
reveal ourselves, that we will bring Pushkin to birth, and am standing at
the feet of that Buddha-like poet. But the world around me is wonderful, and
need to feel and know and think about it. am come into such a wonderful
world of humanity, where we are all able to show every creature and entire
peoples.
Homer, Lenin, Zanabazar, Lomonosov, Einstein, bn Sin, Sukhbaatar,
njinashi, Pascal..
The world is a place of great display and, while take pleasure in
watching it, feel that it is necessary for me to leave in the museum my
own destiny. The shoemaker does not send to the scholar one who needs
shoes, the wise man shows a book to the scholar, the cook prepares food
for that pair, the singer entertains the cook, the farmer offers his harvest to
the cook, and, in experiencing the joys and miseries of the farmer, they are
poets, each one restoring to the other what he or she lacks, and wander
among these people, they who are blessed and ful!lled. A man comes to
the Pushkin Memorial. A man comes back from the Pushkin Memorial. do
not doubt what they say, that everyone's thoughts are the same. We are
living, not in Homer's world of two thousand years ago, but in Gamzatov's
world today, not among the stone steps of the Roman Empire, nor among
the sculptures of Greek myths, rather we are listening to the noise of Tver
Boulevard, we are watching the girls passing nearby, we are experiencing
the loveliness of the world, and am happy that am not in the past, nor in
the future but in this present time. The world which is coming is my life, the
years which are coming are my life, and more interesting to me are the lives
of the people who are living with me at this time. They continue unbroken
the pattern of humanity, they were living a thousand thousand years ago,
wandering about haphazardly, doing what once they did not do, tasting
what once they did not taste. was, indeed, born some centuries ago,
was burnt at the stake, fell in love with a girl called Juliet, drank beer with
Shakespeare, worshipped in the ancient temples and haggled at a bar in a
marketplace.
Or else, being born a hundred years hence, there might have come
!ne days when might have "own to another planet, brought soil from the
moon, made a date with Valya in the shadows beneath a tree, and gone on
holiday to an underwater resort. But no, have been born in these times,
my hands have reached into the soil of Dariganga, mourned the death
of Tsedendorj, watched the life of Yavuukhulan, spoke with Gamzatov,
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Vinokurov and Soloukhin, made friends with Mend-Ooyo and Tsogt, in fact
underwent the twentieth century and, if live slowly, will die during the
!rst half of the twenty-!rst.
feel sorry for my father, riding a horse at the trot along the road to the
brigade headquarters. watch the drunkard, swaying through the door into
his house in the local town, and smile. wander among the hills, holding
the bridle, but, not !nding the hobbled horse, make up a song. There is a
mysterious signi!cance in this world to the love of mother and father and
younger and older siblings. Nothing is more precious than the excitement of
childhood. At !rst, the reason for my coming into this world was to herd the
young calves, but then loved to watch the Mongolian cosmonauts, loved
to speak with them, loved everything!
Who knows where my love for Mongolia comes from! To some extent
am aware how it resides, like a bird's egg, deep within my heart, and have
feared lest it might affect the shadows of other things. The sunny white
buildings in this region, the families in the local town, the children milking
the cows on a summer evening, are all these things which originated on the
wild steppe? The stories told by my mother and the old women on winter
nights around the stove, the images of the poets with their hats and curved
pipes occupying the grade school classrooms, are these things which
originated in the poem "My lateborn lamb? Who knows, to some extent
am aware how these thoughts of my motherland have been beating within
my heart.
sense the blue of the sky every day and, in my mind, the splinters of
clear skyblue grow to a melody, the grasses' mind is secretly in"uenced.
lie down and crawl on the ground, whispering sadly to nature, and realise
it is sticking to my chest and feel its !ne qualities spreading like a joy
throughout my sadness.
The eyes of Maria Tsvetaeva, Pasternak and Yavuu, even the eyes of
Lenin, of Dostoevsky and Gagarin have looked upon the Pushkin memorial.
am happy to be looking with their contemplative gaze, looking at the
memorial with loving eyes like their's, walking the earth in their steps.
did have one thought, in fact. Long-dead people of former times who
lived in caves, the Roman Emperor Julius Ceasar, the emperors of poetry,
Vergil, Catullus, Homer the Greek, the ndian Nagarjuna, the T'ang dynasty
poet Li Po and the Englishman Shakespeare, also my eighty-!ve year old
mother and the hundred billion people who have lived on the earth before
me, as well as the billions of people now living, have all been, and are
today, looking at the bright blue sky and the pure sun. But it is by coming
onto the earth that they might look upon the sun which crosses through
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creation, until this day dissolves into the limitlessness of this world, that they
might see the blue sky! Being alive, how wonderful it is every morning to
look upon the sun, the sky, the mountains, and people and grasses. What
could be happier than this? wrote this poem:
When am alive, play and laugh.
When am not here, leave everything behind.
From the earth take nothing, go naked, as came.
Everything have seen, my descendants, leave for you.
Breath is one's own highest wealth, and is the start of well-being,
and no reputation can compare with my simple body.
My eye sees the living world, my hand takes it.
My ears hear a song, my heart is moved by it.
Silver and gold are worthless, the rays of the moon feel glorious.
shelter among the plants and the rocks of the finite earth.
walk with my head held high, like a mountain peak.
am like the hills, within myself hold a precious store.
am happy upon the earth, living the richest life of all.
My watching eyes preserve the earth, the sun and the oceans!
Though nothing belongs to one man,
am absorbed into the sky possessed by everyman.
Distilled wine, again distilled like arz, keep in poetry!
come and go. As it was before, so will the future be!
am smiling, and am crying. As it was before, so will the future be!
On the wild steppe grow flowers named for many, many girls.
And, in the measureless, limitless sky, every young man is a shining star.
All who are come upon the earth watch the pure sun, Heaven's eye.
And, when they leave the world, they take the sun's rays as a sign..
To those alive, it is the one and only precious, priceless sun!
And, in a shining moment, all absorb the sun into their belovud bodies!
My elder brothers, at every step, people get used to happiness and to the
world. They should enjoy every moment but, should their pleasure in these
wonderful things cease, what difference would there be if they were blind?
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
A person craves happiness too much, his wishes are in fact never
satis!ed! How great it is to come into contact with someone observing the
construction and the roof of the building which preserves what has been
collected over the centuries, the people and beautiful girls and old women
and the vehicles passing by. Or else, how pleasant it is to hear the words,
Excuse me, or to stand behind someone and watch them curse! The earth,
the sky, the sun and stars, books, love, homeland, birds and forests, my
poems and human wealth, smiles and friendly glances, drops of water, rain
and snow, the moon are my rewards and the sun, come upon the earth,
has granted me a reward, and the white snow of winter and the leaves of
autumn and stones are all utterly wonderful. Time alone, though, will move
them forward, it will transform them for itself into happiness, it will drink the
cup of breath dry..
would write poems about the ocean of the !ery sun, eternally blazing,
about the peaceful blue stars pouring like rain into boundlessness, about
those stars' weak light, about the world which wears itself away, turning and
turning, about the secrets of space!
imagine that have lived upon the earth since ancient times, wandering
the earth for a thousand thousand years, listening with blind Homer to
the growling of the ocean's waves, then sheltering in a cave with the !rst
people, pushing mammoths into pits and pummelling them with stones
and wood. And then the ancient earth was covered with water and there
were vast and monstrous !sh. t is as though have been crushed under
the feet of ancient dinosaurs, become rocky scree, have been the serpent
which pierced the lovely breasts of Cleopatra, have rushed in banditry
along the dusty roads, have been burnt at the stake with Bruno and
become smoke, have moved with the clouds, been on the early Mongolian
people's campaigns, sung songs amidst the cheering, and dozed amid
the melancholy squeaking of the carts..And it is as though have been a
donkey, shaking its tail, moving clipclop along the stony road, a lion snarling
in an African forest, an eagle circling on a rocky Kavkaz precipice..
imagine that have lived through a thousand thousand years, have been
changed into the stars and "owers and young goats and into the wheels
of carts, have studied the stars with bn Sin, have played on the !ddle,
have been a phantom wandering at dead of night, have meditated with the
Buddha and forgotten the world, have been stretched out with Christ, and
have "ourished a red "ag in the Paris Commune. And imagine that have
been drunk with Li Po, have struggled to grasp the moon fallen in a river,
have taken an oath of freedom with Spartacus, have galloped upon speedy
horses along the road to Rome from Capuya. imagine in my mind that
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have been Tsiolkovski in the depths of space, have felt hunger with him and
have "own with Yuri Gagarin into the distant canopy of space. imagine
that, with my elder brother Bor, have been sitting, listening with enjoyment
for many hundreds of years to recent conversations with Surenjav the poet.
am living, then, eternally upon the earth, born again and again, changing
into all things, it is as though all people are seen as changed versions of me
and am seen to be changed into the form of all people...there is no past,
present, or future, then, no beginning or conclusion and it is as though am
turning back into the eternal "ow.. have discovered in myself the distress
of Spartacus, the sorrow of Chingunjav's mother, the enthusiasm of Oleg
Koshevoi, a nanve and childlike will, and Einstein's stubbornness and, in
my curious joy, have revealed myself to others and others to myself. That
Einstein is not dead is a small aspect of my own character, and the life of
Koshevoi is a part of my desiring mind! The lives of all who lived before me
are continued through the lives of my own contemporaries, we do not break
mankind's line of inheritance, but we leave the earth to the people of the
future.
What is happier than thinking in such a way? am entrusting to my
children the study of something as being a little bigger, a little further away.
Sorrow is not generally something allotted to me! For me, it is all akin to the
whispering of autumn grasses, the drizzle of falling rain, the mother awaiting
her child, the woman waiting for her lover, the lord losing his position, the
herdsman seeking his horse. The life of the hungry children in England, the
people who are executed in ran, the scholars of today and of former times
are all sorrowful. A renewed joy is born on discovering the meaning of living,
admiring, of barely seeing their sorrow, and the happiness and misery is
too much experienced all through their bodies. The more the power of evil
spirits pains their hearts, the more they grieve for a single fallen leaf, they
are saddened for the origins of a life as though they have done nothing,
and the more they think about it the happier they are. This happiness is not
mine, but all people experience it and we consider is as being the one link
between all the people of the world.
Tolstoi, Einsein and Socrates were all sinful people, who cleared away
their sins, they struggled against their wickedness and puri!ed themselves
and, by this puri!cation, every mark upon their mind was washed away and,
in the end, they were become like the Buddha! At !rst, they collected from
the world all the evil and the good things and, !nally, abandoning what they
had identi!ed as being bad, they created a single beautiful jewel, which
they gave to humanity. Now, am whispering with barefoot Socrates, lively
and spirited Pushkin, shikawa Takuboku of rainsoaked melancholy, and
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
Byron, who blazes red like a !re, am sitting with those who live around
me, and am watching the silent contemplation of Basho, Galileo, Ravjaa
and Tagore.
n the heart's blazing !re, music and wisdom are united in a gentle
melody, the jewel is created for, and given to, mankind. These people think
never of themselves, their lives are dedicated to others. Regular and happy
people have no awareness of the pleasure of these great people. And
wrote a poem!
As though dissolving into the book which am reading,
sink deeper and deeper into my seat, reading with determination.
Like Spartacus' army, organised in long columns,
the letters in the open book before me grow dim before my eyes.
Every word and letter and point are armies, generals and shields.
am seized by the rumbling of the great battle of death.
am led, in front of our men, along the long and serried ranks,
moving as though awakening forgotten memories.
n the pale light, my body is wracked by pain,
follow Spartacus into the !nal attack.
My kite.like a trembling javelin striking his hip,
a cold tip reaching to my liver.
One sad instant in front of our men touches me,
am joined, for a short while, with a moment of misty distance.
Spartacus, his entire body chopped to pieces, fell to the earth,
and did he eventually see a piece of heaven?
The !nal voice, shouting out of a thousand places,
seemed to come and !nd me in the darkness..
The open book grew wings and suddenly "ew away,
its profound echoes scattering through my body.
My !ne elder brothers, when started writing this poem, decided that
would answer some questions about poetry, creativity and music. A work
of art never explains itself to you and it is only by listening to its whisper
that a person can make art. Talent is somewhat similar for the creator and
the reader. The talent for reading is an artistic talent! n this way, the reader
creates along with the creator. The capability to preserve through art what
the creator intends for himself, and the talent of contemplation which comes
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from the art, are what creates the reader. Hemingway's theory of mountain
ice-caps is relevant here. t does not clarify what is clear in music, images
and art, rather it clari!es the beauty that is hidden. We experience the
secret of reading, and this reveals the secrets of !ne art, the vigor of the
creative process. The amusement, understanding and sadness changes
and creates itself by means of the reader, and this is the nature of art. n art
you !nd proofs such as 2+2=4. To establish an understanding by means of
analysis is a portrayal of art. The difference is inherent to it. The imagination
of people who read, observe and listen to poetry, !ne art and music is the
movement of the mind and it simply exempli!es the patterns of thought. Art
is is the symbol of the mind.
n their exposition of the principal laws of economic and political thought,
Marx and Engels appreciated Balzac and did not underplay Balzac's
creative in"uence in favor of contemporary economics. Einstein, the
proponent of relativity theory, claimed that Dostoevsky was, in his opinion,
superior to Gauss.
Superior to Gauss, the king of mathematics..but Balzac and Dostoevsky
were not scholars. When they were alive, though, they possessed the great
talent of explaining humanity and their own society, with sensitivity and
through their own imagery. How might we answer those who think about
the artists mentioned above as being frivolous people, or as suffering from
mental illness? We know that the !rst poets were identi!ed from among
the early scholars through their cosmic intuition, and that they wandered,
by means of their intuition, for many years throughout the cosmos. wrote
another poem.
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
WRITING
Upon the stone bodies, joined through the ages,
the ancients have left pale shadows of rocks..
Grasses and the splayed antlers of stags have found a space,
and have stopped here, embraced by the years, until today.
An archer, with bow and arrow, has secured himself in this space.
He whispers a secret prayer, his arrow flies slowly through time..
On the thin bark of a sheltered tree, once again,
people have been forced to sign the marriage register.
Like an unhappy couple, they have soon split up.
They read to mend the parts they do not grasp,
the words which do not exist.
They tightly hold their writing, their hopes, their sadness,
and only when their bodies are changed into words,
do they find eternity..
My elder brothers, Leonardo da Vinci sculpted the famous image
La Gioconda many centuries ago. From that time until now, the pride,
reverence, debate and annotations surrounding this image has been
unceasing!
Although there have been a thousand explanations for La Gioconda,
no-one's explanation has been able to satisfy everyone. Mona Lisa
keeps her self to herself. Even a thousand years later, the secret of her
smile will remain the same. The picture's secret stays insoluble. Everyone
who looks at La Gioconda enjoys coming up with their own explanation.
And every explanation is true to the one proposing it! This is the reason
why the image is eternal. Thus Homer and Shakespeare will live forever,
because they have come down through the ages with the people. For a
thousand thousand years humanity has discussed the nature of death and
has offered explanations. But no-one knows in fact what death is. Although
we know it to be the case, we observe that people leave their life without
hope of return, and while everyone realises that they are destined to die,
still they feel sorry when those close to them die, they grieve, but they do
$)
not understand death. While the secrets of art and the secrets of death are
similar, they work against comprehension. People make art so as to thwart
death, to compete with time, to keep themselves present. By this token, art
is not about death but about life. n art, we discover the beauty and the
truth of life. To us, art is a sensate power. We feel that, as we proceed
through life, it is not as though we are being needled by something,
rather it is as though we are standing in the mists of autumn, as though
we are swallowing the dawn's rays. This understanding is established by
means of analysis. Hundreds of years ago, no-one could hold onto the
idea of a revolving earth, but what was once bizarre is today a common
idea. Decades ago, there was the hope of space "ight, but today it is like
travelling through the neighborhood. And decades ago, even scholars did
not believe in the theory of relativity, but what was once bizarre is today,
in our century, a source of pride. Analysing in this way, this understanding
is not secret, it is a part of real life. But when we look at La Gioconda, we
discuss her with reverence, but we think not at all about those things which
are a regular part of our lives! All the understanding which is established by
means of analysis becomes clear, and the more time passes, the more we
use it, like our daily bread. We store up the secrets of artistic creation, and
the more time passes, the more mysterious they become and we imagine
them to be extraordinary. But we also think that a poet's work is of greater
value than all the extraordinary, everyday things. Day-to-day life, and the
sun, morning after morning, these things are extraordinary.
The art and understanding which are analysed are like a child's father and
mother. Humanity cannot imagine their absence. That the man who created
La Gioconda is no different from the man who created the "ying machine
is signi!cant and, as human culture proceeds through the ages, human
beauty and the secrets of the human mind are revealed without words.
When we look at La Gioconda, we become beautiful ourselves and, when
we read Tiuchev, we feel that we are moving forwards. Although no-one
created La Gioconda, generally a person creates for people, and this is the
meaning. Seeing that her smile is secret, we can comprehend that she is
not understood. But Mona Lisa is clear before our eyes, we look at her, we
taste and hear and smell her, what more explanation is necessary?
The museum catalog explains how, in Florence, Leonardo da Vinci fell in
love with a sixteen-year-old girl called Gioconda, or Mona Lisa. t tells how
the girl had married, and how her husband had died at a young age. t tells
how Leonardo da Vinci preserved his lover's portrait forever.. But when we
look at this picture, it is not certain to us that the girl was called Gioconda or
whether Leonardo da Vinci was a man of genius, in fact, when we look at this
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picture, we forget everything, we forget that we are on the earth, we grasp
the magic of the picture but we gaze at the picture, we are breathing with the
picture. The picture's extraordinary quality takes us from the earth, we grasp
onto the enchantment of Mona Lisa. So, in the moment when we manage to
free ourselves from the image, there really was a man named Leonardo da
Vinci, who created an eternal and extraordinary portrait of a young girl named
Gioconda. f we think of all these things together, the magic of the picture
causes us to fall into a state of weightlessness and we forget ourselves, or
else we think of enjoying the moment of happiness, which is akin to magic,
and so we take pleasure in being alive, we are truly proud and forceful and
we grasp onto our divine wish to move a few steps away from our ordinary
life. Thus people take power from themselves and from the art which they
have created, they create art of themselves and their art enhances their
beauty. As D Uriankhai once said, "There is a !ery engine within us!
The creation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
or even his Ninth Symphony could be said to be their own eternal and
undying memorials. Just as Pushkin and Beethoven will never be born
again, so no-one will ever again be able to compose Eugene Onegin or
the Ninth Symphony. This is the truth. Someone else might have been be
creating other work alongside these pieces, but it is certain that they could
not have created precisely the works of those other men. But did Pushkin
and Beethoven make their own memorials? We have every reason to say
that, previously, there was a man named Beethoven or Pushkin, not even
a poet or a composer, and that that man created in poetry or in melody
a memorial dedicated to people. People love people, people suffer from
shyness, people do not forget people, people make people beautiful.!
Pushkin created all these things in himself and the everyday man Pushkin
became the godlike man Pushkin. Out of the effort to create beauty in
himself he made people beautiful, he climbed the ladder and, having offered
beauty to the people, he fashioned himself into the form of a beautiful and
eternal man. So think that Pushkin created Eugene Onegin, and humanity
created Pushkin and humanity was embodied in this single man, Pushkin,
and think that through him poetry came to be revealed. Because poets
are creative artists, they do not destroy anything! n the history of humanity,
no poet has defected from his motherland. Or else Byron, Pete!, Musa
Jalil and many thousands of poets have given their folden lives for the
happiness of mankind. And so wrote this poem.
.without fail, poets are men, but assassins are cowardly!
Only in their fear are they cowards!
$*
So, then, they didn't shoot divine Pushkin or Dante,
but they did cause them to be shot!
t was so that they would not descend
from the heights of fame to where the wild beasts are.
The ones who give their lives remain in their people!
Foggy Russia did not at that time understand
Lermontov, who was light like the whitening of dawn.
For fine hundred years, they have given their lives for the truth,
and it has remained a riddle!
We struggle, we do not think this was no proverb, it was the law!
They were convinced, they proclaimed Chaadaev mad,
who had called the people to freedom!
They removed Lobachevski from his post,
who had described the universe's geometry,
calling him mad and useless!
But do you think they could separate this wisdom
from the mind of the Russian people?
My !ne elder brothers, although it might seem as though artistic works
always initiate with human beings and although it might seem that it is
the artist who makes them, should again say that they are created in
partnership. The truth is, that what is written or spoken by creative artists
takes place in human life and relationships or else in nature. Then its form
is found, but it needs at one point a creator to manifest it and make it clear
to other people. This is not, though, an artistic secret, it is merely one of
very many crystals.
Clear ideas are clear secrets. Secrets, however are clear and clarity,
however, is secret, and this is the nature of art.
My !ne elder brothers, Musa Jalil, Chernishevski, Dostoevsky, Fuchik,
Nazim Hikmet and Lermontov are sitting in jail. They are sitting, leaning
against the jail walls, contemplating the world, they it is who have created
human beauty. Outside, there are people guarding the guns, they are in
fact paying no attention to those who are shut up, away from the world.
The guards did not know that they were suppressing and destroying human
pride, the fount of their own wisdom and beauty. These guards imagine that
they are driving a car, but it is the car which is steering. The car is a human
thing which, on the road of change, destroys and smashes much that is
valuable. Creativity is their most dangerous enemy, it unwinds the screws.
And they are fearful of creativity.
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So, their hands unshaking, they shoot the thinkers, the ones who speak
human truths, they shoot Lorca, Miklys Radnyti, Lermontov and Fuchik.
Their hearts were become stone, but they were not ill. Killing was for them
like washing their hands or slicing bread. At morning time, the god Jupiter
stretched out upon a rock the hero Prometheus, who had stolen !re for
humanity. And wrote a poem.
From the time of Shakespeare,
great people of genius have had their skins flayed,
but there were idiots alive,
indulging in the suffering of others!
n this time philistines remained,
and punishment was allotted to the poets!
Dante was sentenced to death,
and they shot Pushkin with a poisoned arrow!
Vanishing into the sky, sad with stars,
Lermontov was pursued from the northern capital!
Soon Kavkaz was shaking to the sound of bullets and,
at the beginning of the long road, by means of a duel,
a full-stop was made!
The red fire was like a hungry carnivore,
it pounced and swallowed Bruno, and the fools
were content to gaze patiently as he was changed in the fire!
And now the living descendants of Dante
are continuing their ancestors' heritage.
As we praise and honor great Pushkin,
we are aiming fire at his descendants..
My !ne elder brothers, among our vast family, is it true that Beethoven
was deaf? Although everyone speaks about him as being deaf, Beethoven
listened to the speech of "owers and understood the whispering of distant
stars. n the country of the deaf, the mind does not hear human qualities.
Most people hear with their ears, but they do not take melody into their
heart. But his ears did not listen alone, they felt the whispering of the world
in his heart. For Beethoven life was revealed through music and, through
listening to it in his body, he created melody from it. Now, when listen to
the purity of the Moonlight Sonata, or else to a magni!cent symphony, try
to !nd Beethoven's two forms. Walking in contemplation along a moonlit
riverbank, the waves on the lake glinting a little in the pale light, a lurching
$"
boat, touching the shadow of a beautiful young woman, Beethoven worked
with all of this and the clear purity went into his deep desires. But amidst
the stormy winds, the lightning, the !erce struggle and the sorrowful regret,
the mountains stand and !ght and Beethoven imagines the spark which
glimmers in his eyes to be magni!cent and wrathful.
Beethoven lived as though he had uni!ed the two extremes of the world.
He raised himself between two con"icting mindsets, one attractive like
delicate "owers, the other rough and severe like rubble, and his destiny
was to create music from homeland, love, nature, struggle, beauty and
the search for truth. The music which he himself created took birth in,
brought pleasure to, and embodied his intentions for, the world. For him,
life was experienced as a powerful struggle, as sorrow. f were to portray
Beethoven as happy and laughing, it would not be Beethoven. And now my
!ne elder brothers, this portrait, "Spring's Braid, or The Lyrical Precipice is
drawing to a close. Life is not the braiding of creative circumstance, it is a
measure of time which has been perfectly organised by fate.
So only when people come together do they come together, and in
separation alone is their day of separation. Such things are not in fact
compounded by every situation which has ever been created, but by the
primacy of the sun beyond. When you do not believe in genuine love, you
imagine it to be a story and, when you do not believe in true friendship,
you laugh about it. But, at that moment, please turn away from yourself
and consider how you have fallen from the human level into that of the
animals. used to be fond of shouting in front of people, but now have
grown to silent contemplation. Tomorrow shall start on the road to become
a genuine person.
Moscow/Ulaanbaatar, 1982-1984
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
LIFE
The trees grow like divine wishes,
and the round moon turns the river silver.
The swallows weave ahead along the white banks,
and the horses of time whinny and snort.

A man is walking, tired from his journey,
over the broad path of the vast earth.
The sky glimmers, utterly limitless,
and he sits to rest upon the colored stones.
My life pulses in the space between the stars,
the fine and lovely snows pile up..
Snow in summer, rain in winter -
the children believe my funny stories.
The mountains are secret, like scholars' wisdom,
the rivers alert, as though suddenly shocked.
The roads are all branching like destiny,
and all the stars drop like the rain.
The butterfly flits happily across the silent meadow.
Every moment, a great gift is taken from the world.
Life is short, and perfect loveliness.
Dissatisfied with its taste, we want happiness, and to be without grief.
The ruddy shelduck's wings glimmer in the sun,
as though suddenly invisible.
United with the depths of Heaven,
as though not here, 'm happy with this life!
Beautiful, the swans wings are glimmering in the sun,
a single instance of magic, and life itself aglimmer!
A tired traveller in the invisible breadth of the world,
am come, as though for rest, to the edge of the pure spring!
18 4 85
$$
JOINED WITH NATURE
1
My love, please stand and slowly observe the skyblue stars of evening,
and strive for the ancient distance,
and soothe your excited mind.
Call upon your desiring thoughts, be ready to receive them.
My love, please slowly observe the skyblue stars on a cold night.
The first step is to join your loving body with the skies!
2
My love, please catch in your palms the magic drops of summer rain,
and, tired in the coolness,
sip what remains upon the flower's leaves.
f there be a medicine to revive the human body,
withered like grass, it is the rain.
n the cold drops is held the secret for a hundred years of life.
The next step is to join your body with the world of water!
3
My love, please gaze every morning at the sun,
rising in the red overhead,
and purify your mind in the rain of light beneath the vast skies.
n the world of colorful images, you are my small spring of light,
the daughter of the mother sun who dwells above,
a sundrop fallen on the land.
The third step is to join your colorful beautiful body with the shining light!
4
My love, please consider as you walk in the light of the gently packed snows,
and find the secrets of the snowbirds,
their intuition, in the turning falling flakes.
Floating in the white mist of dreams, we return to the world of children.
There is no return to those times passed!
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The fourth step is to join these signs of yours, your loveliness,
with the snowflakes!
5
My love, please wander the hills and understand the years,
and open to yourself the bridge of going and coming,
from the line of days.
There is a powerful chain established,
and the mountains and you and are all alike.
Please come back from among the silent hills of the world!
The fifth step is to join your pure thoughts with time!
6
My love, please sit upon the river back and talk with the others,
and use your voice to wear,
wear away the lovely colored stones!
Sadness and misery flow like a pattern, know that all are joined with time!
Your beauty is not your own, it is of the natural world!
f nothing is special upon the earth, the sixth step is to join with the flow!
7
My love, please listen to the whispering of the grass the whole evening,
and you will join with the profound secrets of the broad earth,
and your thoughts will be deepened and your mind expanded.
You live in the width of the earth,
not in the space you have taken for yourself,
and the scent of the grass growing ceacelessly
about your feet pervades the earth.
f no other road exists for us, the seventh step is to join with the grass!
8
My dear love, please stand amid the morning mists of autumn,
and, my darling, please understand
why have not answered all the questions
you have put to me.
n the morning, you know it is not pleasure, but a melancholy secret!
t is in a grove within your gently sighing heart, whilst the snow is falling!
When there is no hope, the eighth step is to join with the autumn mists!
$&
9
My love, please grasp the cold stones and embrace the earth,
and the stones of your homeland
will whisper the source of their power.
Please bow to the high fate which has made you human,
a life once obtained.
You feel that to live is an indestructible link between life and earth!
The ninth step is to join with wonderful fire, water, air and earth!
10
My love, please listen to the melody of the wind,
and tune your mind within,
and comprehend freedom on the earth beneath the moon.
Beautiful melodies and sad songs always disturb the human mind,
and so the earth's anxiety
and disorder are dissolved into the heart!
The tenth step is straightaway to join with the wind from future times!
11
My love, please listen to the song of the cranes and love other people,
for you needs must pass with the living
along the roads of the dusty world.
Please seek from the birds how to live with kindness over a long lifetime,
for, though naughty when young, you are cautions,
and the birds are your secret grooms.
The eleventh step is to join among the cranes in great space!
12
My love, please receive the four times,
the color and the melody of every season, and ask of the broad trees'
yellowing leaves the thousand secrets of meeting and separation!
Please learn from the ancient mountains how to be serious,
how not to pay attention to crude things..
The mountains, who have worn away the wind,
will speak of gentleness and loyalty.
The twelfth step is to join with the natural earth, and learn its language!
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
IN PLACE OF A CONCLUSION
You understand, my dear, to observe the skyblue stars of evening,
to join with the sky.
You understand, my dear, to taste the silver drops of rain,
to awaken your body.
You understand, my dear, to gaze every morning at the rising sun,
to purify your thoughts.
You understand, my dear, to join with beauty
and intuition in the heavypacked snowfall.
You understand, my dear, to sense your body through the years,
stationed amongst the hills.
You understand, my dear, and know that,
on the bank of the gently flowing river,
there is no return.
You understand, my dear, to listen to the grasses whispering,
to stretch your infant mind.
You understand, my dear, to unlock the many secrets
in the mists of morning.
You understand, my dear, to take the power and grasp the cold rocks,
and hold the earth.
You understand, my dear, how the wind provokes free movement
in the human world.
You understand, my dear, that, the cranes' song produces a gentle mind
which loves creatures.
You understand, my dear, to talk with the mountains on the dusty earth,
and learn the language of nature.
%)
IN PLACE OF A BEGINNING
Please !nd in yourself, my love, the !rst step, to join with nature!
Take always to yourself the spring, to purify your mind and your body.
Find in the perfect world the language of mountains and water,
and read the ocean's waves in translation!
And !nd in nature's verity the power to eliminate sadness,
the gift of eternal happiness!
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
TIME
Dark dark dark dark skies..
Endless endless endless endless time..
Beginningless beginningless, endless space, space..
Deserted deserted, nothing to match the time, the time..
Billowing on the limitless shore of space, of time's great dark river,
the law, the people and towns,
the sun and moon are afloat on this great river.
But time prevails in this turning world, time is victorious.
The stars are, and they are not, and time connects all, washes all away.
Dark dark, the great river of time billows onwards..
nconceivable inconceivable space,
and here and there the fire of faith flashes.
We are drowning in the river of vast time,
but do we not, with time, replenish our bodies?
Amid the silence of the not quite empty, not quite empty space,
the world's sphere revolves, wearing itself away..
A single eye watches a leaf, me, floating on the river of time,
imagines it, unsevered from timelessness..
1979-1982
%*
MY MOTHERLAND, EXPOSED
an essay
n my child's imagination, conceived of my motherland as the sky and
the hills. Now the years have passed and now believe all beautiful things
to be my motherland. The veiled form of my motherland is in the beautiful
woman passing by, and have no doubt that the child beginning to move
in her belly is linked with the starry world, that it senses the wind and the
storms.
The microcosmic infant growing in the woman's belly is formed through
the working of the stars and has the magic powers of humanity. Moments
are measured in the mother's gait and, two days later, he stands !rmly on
his feet and know that the young boy looking at the Pleiades, "ashing in
the breadth of boundless space, is my son and the son of humans and
animals!
The woman walks on, carrying the infant in her belly. n her, we say,
dwells the motherland.
The willow trees sway before me, their leaves are rustling. Even in these
trees the motherland dwells, and all the leaves are watching me with the
eyes of the motherland. The motherland, we say, is the divine power which
dwells in all humans. The longing of humans and animals, the brightest of
images, is the motherland. Thinking that into her is absorbed all that is good
and beautiful, our desires have struggled to create a compassionate truth,
and through this struggle has made humans into Buddhas.
Golden Hill is truly alive. People have been worshipping this mountain
for many centuries and the thoughts of many thousands of people are
focussed on this one point, this mountain. The faith and wishes of all people
are absorbed by it, and from this one ordinary mountain is brought the
love of one's motherland. t was useless for my ancestors to fail to pay the
mountain homage! They had to dissolve their love into one thing alone! And
the object of this eternal love, which has come down to us, is Golden Hill in
Dariganga.
So, every time look at this mountain which is the quintessence of faith
and secret desires down the ages, am aware that, three hundred years
ago, my ancestors' ancestors were standing, worshipping this mountain,
just as am doing. My ancestors cross over this mountain to meet with
me. And, when three hundred years have passed, my descendants will
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
come, like am doing, and worship Golden Hill, and feel that, by living
in the world, am crossing over the mountain. Golden Hill is worshipped
because it is a mountain made through the magic of thought. t is true
and everlasting because we love and worship it. n whatever we begin to
worship, there love resides. When there is love residing, there too will be
!ne thoughts and good actions. My mother told me the following story:
"Once upon a time, before a monk went to study in Lhasa, his mother,
who had raised him, asked him to make her an image of White Tara.
"When the boy had completed his studies in the distant land, he suddenly
realised as he stood outside his ger that he had forgotten his mother's
request. But it was too late to go back. Because he had failed to ful!ll his
mother's wishes, it would be hard for him to look her directly in the face,
so he looked around at the land which had so in"uenced his mind, until he
spied a spherical white stone.
"A thought glistened inside the boy, he quickly snatched the stone and
held it inside his pocket, wrapped in a lovely offering scarf. And so, as his
time with his mother was drawing to a close, she mentioned her request to
him and he offered her the bound stone. He said to her, 'Mother, want you
never to unwrap this.'
Right up until the end of her life, his mother believed this stone to be the
Buddha. One day, the nature of the universe came to touch her. She said,
'My son, forty years have worshipped the Buddha from the depths of
my heart. have always followed the path of virtue, have entrusted all my
desires to the Buddha.
"'Now the time is come for me to leave my life on the earth. f could see
the Buddha,' she said, 'my mind would be content.'
"What could the boy do? He stood there, silent, for a long time and !nally
he resolved to tell her the truth.!
"'Well, let's look at the stone, then,' he said. 'One who has trusted in the
Buddha for forty years, worshipping him in her thoughts by day and in her
dreams by night should not depart in darkness.'
"With deep regret, the boy unwound the offering scarf. But there was no
stone, rather there stood White Tara, shining in pure gold, beautiful and
perfect. The explanation is as follows:
Utterly trusting in something, one is able to focus everything into the
power of thought. This being so, there is not a single thing which is not
created.
Living alone beneath the moving clouds, call upon my motherland. This
motherland of mine is my dol, receiving my devotion. By the power of this
idol, cleanse and purify my body, mind and spirit.
%"
The path which reaches the peak of my motherland's beauty is Mother
Nature. The path to this Nature is the cleansing of the superior levels of
the inner mind. And right action and right thought repairs the road which
reaches the superior truth of the mind.
The circumstance which gave birth to great Sukhbaatar, Zanabazar and
Natsagdorj has continued for a thousand thousand years. t it not of them,
but of my motherland, which bears them across, which is the platform from
where they might serve others.
1983
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
GRASS
Oh, grasses, my parents and my brothers
and my children at a single time..
Oh, grasses, my dear body
and my pure desire and my loving companions..
Sighing gently, stroke the grasses.
My grasses, take in your scent as an infant's soft curly hair.
My grasses, stroke you as old men stroke their white beards.
My grasses, kiss you as kiss my passionate lover's hair,
black as spades.
Oh, grasses, my coursing blood, my pigtails..
Oh, my ancestors in times rubbed and wasted away,
oh, they blow in the wind, dissolve into grasses.
Oh, my ancestors become the grasses, swaying,
swaying in the cold rain of autumn.
Oh, my grasses, do the humans and animals,
absorbed into the earth grow from age to age?
Oh, man is born and poetry is born upon the sunbleached green.
Oh, grasp at the ashes. The young shoots sprout in my burning hand,
and oh, the wind caresses them,
feel the grasses blowing in the wind.
Oh, the green, green sap,
happily fall asleep in the sharp scent of the wild grasses,
have withered away and bloomed again for many centuries!
My umbilicus linked to solid rock and flowers,
enliven the world with my warm blood.
Verdant young shoots stick out from between the rocks,
and oh, my children are dancing in the wind..
Rocks worn away become flowers, or flowers grown hard become rocks,
and grow, tucked between the rocks and the flowers,
my warm blood waters the flowers and the rocks.
The whole world, the animals and people, dwell upon the flowers' petals.
Oh, grasses, grasses my life, my horses, my lovers,
my distant future and my ancient past.
%$
Oh, grasses, my sadness and my flourishing, my place to live,
oh, , the Grasspoet, sing of you!
Oh, these lines of song from so many thousand verdant poets,
oh, Shagdarsuren, an interwoven carpet of grasses
on the wild steppe,
oh, Whitman the elder, leaves of grass,
oh, my old mother, singing lullabies to me in my cradle,
oh, Saruulbuyan and Mend-Ooyo, Yavuukhulan and njinashi,
grasses and vegetation reaching to your soles, grasses..
Oh, my bitter harvest, absorbed into the earth,
growing from the earth's depths!
From an inconceivable distance of years,
create the song of the ancestors..
My hundred million grandchildren, the voices of morning and evening..
Oh, grasses, blowing in the wind, washed by the rain, growing in the sun.
Oh, grasses, my poem, my black-eyed belovud,
oh, they kiss, they are birthed, they die. The blood returns,
the stars glister, desire is born.
Oh, they are all become grasses..
Oh, my green song of eternity, grasses, my golden idol, grasses!
An eternal, ancient magic..
The life of the wide world..
The grasses, the grasses..
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
A SECOND SONG OF GRASS
Grasses grow and completely cover the world.
They struggle upwards like a green flame,
with all their relatives they meet with the sunlight.
Grasses grow, as though itching my whole body.
By day, human beings make noise like animals,
by night they dream like children,
they grow amid the sleep which grants eternity.
At dawn the grasses awaken to play like boys and girls.
The young shoots grow, shrieking over the broad and peaceful earth.
The invincible signs of this world dissolve into the grasses,
They grow straight up and, though crushed by cartwheels,
they rise again.
All peoples enjoy the protection of the abundant grasses,
heading off on foot, and standing there, pulling at the grasses.
The grasses, with humans and animals, manage every calamity,
dying together, awakening together, through many eons, falling,
exactly like a man, struck down by the scythe of cruel war,
rising, exactly like a man, from the smoke of fires,
never abandoning the world!
Destroyed in death with my ancestors,
the lineage of grasses is dedicated now to the turning world..
Like a jewel they wear away, wear down thousands of years.
A single grain from the peaceful steppe,
planted on the land, grows straightaway,
proves this life to be invincible!
This gives grasses their fame, the loyal friends of animals and humans.
n the world's society, the relatives of the sun proclaim their being.
The grasses of the world, like anyone else, love freedom.
Like the rain teeming against the beneficent sun,
they nowhere penetrate the darkness.
Though every highway on this earth is laid free from potholes,
still the extraordinary grasses push up,
they tear the rocks apart, and stand, like heroes.
%&
Like needles, their young bodies directly penetrate the road and,
from pitch darkness, they stand to grasp the sun's light.
With all my strength sing the grasses!
They even push up through the peaks of far off mountains,
they even wear away the bottom of the sea.
n peaceful times, men and grasses make friends,
and they strive to support each other beneath the distant stars,
and they are great allies!
Oh! The realm of grasses, the realm of humans, the realm of stars!
Oh! the realm of animals, the realm of birds, the realm of fish!
Oh! the realm of rivers, the realm of rocks, the realm of fire listen!
Enrichening the life-sustaining succulent green bodies,
the invincible grasses, let us praise their name!
1983
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Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
A THIRD SONG OF GRASS
am the grasses, my life serene, lithe in the western wind,
each one blowing, gently swaying,
pushing even through the undiminished snows.
am not affected by the horses' hooves upon the wild steppe,
am not trampled by someone's hard soles,
and, fortunate, though rest between many grasses,
am the carpet beneath a pair of lovers.
am not licked by the red tongues of autumn fires,
nor does my body smell of smoke and ash.
The oak is felled in the warm eastern winds,
but my weak body remains fixed to the earth.
n autumn, wither, turning yellow from the tip,
but in spring bud green from my roots.
grow up, tickling the little girls' feet, feeling the misty blue spring.
The autumn moves across my tips, but in my roots the spring is hiding.
Things change and transform from body to body,
and in my own body bring them together.
am the grasses..
No need for great fame,
sleep and dream beneath the snows,
have no connection with time!
My serene life is a green carpet for people!
And am the mantle for many who are no more here!
have no connection with anything.
The sunlight is my God.
All the grasses are my relatives.
am a cover for the world.
alone am the dark green memorial for you who are not here.
sway beneath your feet,
rock noisily above your head.
My serene life holds the sadness of time,
and living souls dissolve into the gently rippling grasses.
&)
You humans are grasses!
You, and we, are linked as one!
When you live, you are my younger brothers, my older sisters.
When you are no longer, you are my younger brothers, my older sisters.
When this world has been, you, we have been inseparable,
forever mingled in our bodies.
The grasses penetrate even the stone tombs,
faithful right up to your memorial!
The target may be right, or the target may be wrong,
but the grasses forgive, and the grasses come back
and are reborn.
The grasses are your loyal companions,
they remain above your corpse,
weeping like widows in the blowing winds.
They are whitened by the starlight night.
The grasses, a monument not made by human hand!
The grasses, the breath of days spent travelling!
The grasses they give themselves great honor!
You are retained forever in the world.
There is a special magic in the grasses!
There is no death in the grasses, the eye of death compares with death
the withering of the grasses' tips, and the roots are still alive.
Proclaiming life even where they stand,
a monument to many people's lives, the final prize.
Though not a word is spoken, the swaying grasses nod in silence.
understand, with not a word, their unknown secret.
The grasses grow, silent under the distant stars.
Their lack of empty chatter is a great sign.
A person's fame will disappear, but oh, the grasses still remain.
Living creatures go away, but
oh, the grasses still grow.
1983
&(
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
LEAVES
Deep in my heart, a little book of destiny am pulsing to the noise of leaves,
and the inscriptions of time past are lost amid imperceptible arteries.
The green pages are rustling in the book of handbreadth leaves.
The first man's steps are approaching, a pulse throbbing with dull sound.
There are many green eyes gazing at me.
wonder at the hidden language of ancient leaves.
Hearing in the leaves the breath of ancestors,
the small and green and gentle-bodied stars call out to the leaves.
Oh, a hundred years ago, the ancestors of the leaves
were lovely, journeying in this noisy green world.
When, golden, they fell, their prayer was to join the soil and,
in the storms, these leaves flew by themselves, unseparated.
Oh, leaves, leaves, gentle as lips,
elegant green eyes, lovely as a first love whispering.
Oh, leaves, leaves, the fine melody of Mother Nature,
the gentle whisper of music,
continues to be heard while we remain alive!
The forms of the melancholy and forgiving secret,
these green leaves are true and false, like a dream!
Life and sickness, like an impression upon my heart, and
these green leaves like a roof, like the shadow of a roof!
A wise prophet bows to the book of leaves.
f his guess is right, its image preserves the secrets of the stars.
ts fine veins, unrealised, are the paths of destiny,
the bodies of leaves our galactic astrologers
through the ages!
Shamaness leaves, shaman leaves, scholar leaves!
&*
Keeping the changing seasons in your green bodies as
though collecting Songs.
Rustling gently, you are beautiful like a young girl's untouched body.
And, once guessed, we penetrate the secret of the subtle leaves.
The stars have fought their way above the trees,
have fallen and become leaves.
We grasp the leaves from the heavenly branches,
are as though born from a mother's womb.
So many young melodic leaves, of wild cherry, willow, and birch!
scry you in the mirror of your distant ancestors.
The figure of a horseman rides over the green, green leaves.
The young girl, nanve, imagines him the King of Hearts.
Oh, what is there absorbed into the paths through the book of leaves?
As they watch our lives, the leaves do not cry for our bodies!
1983
&!
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
STONES
stop at the head of the low mountain pass, where the round, blue stones
crunch, and gaze into the autumn's azure distance, like a gift from my
ancestors. The few white ger are almost "ying, "ying away in the blue vision
of horses, and the chill breeze sings the tears of the sky..
My Naranbulag, my sunspring.a few horses drinking there, they seem
small to me, like bustards through the mirage ..
get down from my horse and imagine somehow that am stroking the
blue, blue stones. When was young, chased over these stones with
leather straps, feel distressed. The stones are in pain, they are hurting.
And, though beat them every day with wet leather straps, the stones said
nothing. But am tired. So take a rest, sitting on the stones.
"The rascal sits upon the stones, just like a bird, said my grandmother,
"and he screams with all his might.
Thinking back now, these stones toughened me up, they gave me the
strength to travel far away. My grandmother is now gone. Only the stones
remain. Perhaps my grandmother is a melody, collecting dried dung in the
blue mirage of autumn, abandoning me in the azure distance, dissolving
into the mirage of the earth.
rode off and came to the source of the spring. Among these stones was
the place where my father had pitched the ger. Here is where experienced
the world and its people. fell upon the colorful world, the !rst days moved
away from me and, one day in a time yet to come, will be missing from
the earth and will join once more with the !rst days. My day of reckoning
will come upon the earth, will bask in the red winter sun and, from these
instances of rainbows will come crystals of !ne snow, shining in my eyes
in the sunlight. The days stacked up and, later, the blue and yellow and
red and green stones of the stars would crunch in my hands. When was
young, gazing at the heavenly bridge, the seam joining fact with !ction,
thought the stars to be like colored stones..
played with the most beautiful, the most lovely stones, wandered about
looking for my own Khongorzul!
For me, to come across that dear little child was like !nding riches among
the stars, and went off gathering stones.
wander among the shining mists of recollection, my thoughts were like
&"
unsullied white stones stored away in the very depths of thought, sat
there watching them as though on a !lm. f were now to meet with little
Khongorzul, playing like starboys and stargirls, we would not recognise
one another. Even if we did recognise one another, it would be as though
visitors from distant planets. We would be starpoets.
would go collecting star stones. would remember the stargirl. We would
be smiling, but this sad thought of returning would awaken me:
With a poet's bragging mind,
Grasp the stars in the night sky.
think about how wrote this when was about ten years old. n this
golden age, when moved among the stars, laid out the contents of my
life. Now have dissolved into poetry the pure, clear mind of infancy, and
ask that nothing dirty the stones of the stars. And so, give you this poem
about the stones:
The stones of this world stand out, like strongwilled, powerful young men.
They oppose the turning seasons, the storms,
they pay no attention to heat or cold.
The many lamps of shining blue stone at
every point beneath the blue sky,
would never argue but that they are the soul of the eternal golden world!
n this universe, does anything but time overcome
these many blue stones,
worn away and dissolved into the years?
think that time does not observe the flow of the great river.
Do not the stones have victory over time,
as it fades into the splashing waves?
Forever wearing myself away, search for perfect victory,
and these worldstones,
like the human mind, do not burn in the red fires.
f the rivers and the oceans wear the stones down and absorb them,
then my thoughts are right!
These great waters are dissolved stones!
Like sugar granules dissolved into tea,
we are always drinking the water of dissolved stones.
And now, because we have drunk the stone waters,
we trust that we cannot be broken.
And in time, we have found how we might raise up a memorial of marble.
&#
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
But with the stones we fight against time, in awe of the armed ancients.
We know that, naked and tough like these true stones, we are unbreakable,
and that those desiring eternity move through generations,
honoring the stones.
But, to win victory, the stones stand,
like men who have given up everything.
The particles of stone, unburnt by fire,
are my ancestors who moved upon the earth..
All people from the past are become stone and, returning to us,
they have victory over time,
and even now these stones are alive,
like us they have pleasure and sorrow.
We voice the centuries of each stone,
equal to eras of lightning and centuries of atoms.
Creatures who travel far, over the edge of time,
grasped weapons of stone.
People at first built shelters, prepared their food,
protected their bodies, and
oh, now that we are become strong,
we offer song to the stones!
A thousand years away, a group of stone men crossed the river of time
and, thinking silently in the mists,
sighed into the whistling wind.
Stone men, blue in the moonlight a sign of undying humanity.
And now, the unflickering candle of the stones does not burn out in the wind
Pushing through the sky.
stroke the foreheads of the stone men on the cool steppe, they are cold.
approach the group of stone men, the greybeards of the universe!
Even in our daily life we befriend the stones,
and, on the broad steppe,
we erect cities of stone to span the years!
We die from this ordinary earth, and
the stones of our homeland become our memorial.
They watch over eternal peace and, in silence, they become friends,
and someone will mark with stone
their final point upon the turning earth.
n our lives, we take from the stones our strong will and our power and,
forever travelling, in the stones we will remain alive!
&$
A SONG FOR THE STONES
My family, you deep blue stones,
have not left you since came to you.
As walk upon the skin of the world,
beneath my feet the strong flowers hold me up.
Like pigeons fluttering together,
these stones are inncocent in the world.
As the years go by, you grow closer to me.
know that my ancestors are here, costumed as the stones of this world.
Oh, my stones, do not hear your breathing?
Do not read just a little of the letter,
come to me from the deep distance of the years?
My ancestors have left this world,
and their life is dissolved into the stones.
Are they forever looking upon us with eyes of stone?
Everywhere in the moon's dull glow, they notice me,
and imagine the stones are recording my every step.
Even the sky seems to me to have the stones' blue color,
even the soaring cranes for me are birds of stone.
Oh, my living stones, as sit upon the stones in the peace of evening,
my life grows longer, my vigor increases.
Maybe even the distant stars are stones.
Poets in this world like to make comparisons with stones.
Every man likes to be unbreakable and strong.
Oh, offered to my relatives a song for the stones,
and my love and trust grew strong like the stones!
Moscow/Ulaanbaatar/ 1979, 1982, 1984
&%
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
HILLS
My home of the hills kept secrets of my easy childhood,
turned and shook off the dust of my journey.
A chill breeze wept deep within my simple heart,
and lay upon the flowers and took my rest.
n these many rounded homes of the sands,
ancient people were heard in celebration.
Their singing voices shot rays of red from the hills,
and, as though from my early dreams of childhood,
a woman in a red deel sits looking northeastwards
into the mists of evening, singing as she plaits her queue,
the rain heavily splashing, my heart drenched.
The patterns in the sand, the waves of my mind,
the whispering of my grandmother, the drizzling rain,
hints for remembering the ancient times..
And now, with the wind and the rain, am far away.
The butterfly has found shelter in life's flowers,
and have secreted my grandmother among the hills of girls.
We search for grandmother, for stories,
for the heavens and for the clear sky,
but without success.the world is twenty years ago!
And birds are twittering on the hillocks,
they fly off towards the Himalayan peaks.
My thoughts have bloomed in the blue rays of story,
and my poems flow at evening.
The autumn wind faintly, faintly canters,
dances here
and there
and here
and there.
&&
This rainy day is like when reminisced with my grandmother,
a sunny life is like knowing fact from fiction,
and my careful life
and my nanve thoughts are far apart!
The hills swam in the silken white mists,
the hills came to life among the yellow sands,
the hills, like a string of beads,
my grandmother's thoughts,
or the hills, round like a woman's breasts
Tuning the memories of my easy childhood,
there's a chill breeze in my simple heart.
My grandmother appears from the autumn rain,
as though whispering stories to me, sitting on the hills..
The hills are alive, rumbling like camels.
Their cloud-calves, moving the distance, send down rain.
Like two calves, playing in the moonlight,
the hills all seem drenched in the autumn rains.
As though the two white hills are rumbling..
As though on earth are the white rain of autumn and the moonlit night..
stand among the hills, soaked in the rain and,
in the grey mists, the hills are with me.
My home of the hills kept secrets of my easy childhood,
ancient people were heard in celebration..
&'
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
THE PREY
My brothers and sisters, the rivers and streams, are melded with my life.
My younger and older brothers, the grasses, weave through my body.
The prey antelopes, wildcats, foxes,
rabbits are all my younger brothers.
The carnivores lions, wolves, snow-leopards,
bears are all my older brothers and my sisters.
call all the animals of the earth together - Please come, say.
The father of us all is the distant blue heaven,
my gentle mother the earth!
t's pointless to say These are animals, these are birds
the elements are just the same!
We have always been equally the children of Mother Nature!
Oh, like my belovud, caress this delicate young birch.
My gentle girl used to play with me at the edges of its branches, and
return across nature to the pure white birch.
remember the noise of leaves, my love's whisper, when was living,
and oh, this poor young deer is my own brother,
three months old.
Eating grass from my hand, drinking water from the stream,
resting in the shade of a tree.
Five thousand years ago was a young goat,
bleating into the spring winds.
Until men came and the earth was changed,
nature took every form born to a
Mother!
The distant white mountains are my mother's relatives!
They changed into gentle bodies and caressed me,
they protected me from dangerous storms
and wind and rain,
spreading their fragrant flowers.
My son the mountain, the ornament of father sky and mother earth!
am watching my brother in his sheepskin deel,
understand a little our people's songs of horseback shooting!
')
am glancing at my brother in his deerskin deel,
And they shoot from horseback,
who were raised by Mother Nature just the same!
t has a sheepskin deel and they shoot it, thinking it alive.
Hey! sn't that Mother Nature's lovely mind and body over there?
The many creatures have a heart like us, and they weep..
Think about this - my young brother wears a coat made from his older brother.
The fish swimming in the water are your kindly children,
and the oceans come from the many fish weeping,
and there they swim!
And all the birds flying in the heavens are your kin..
They are losing patience, heading out from people,
they will find freedom in the skies!
Oh, do not take power from Mother Earth, your brothers are the animals,
please adapt to them,
please live among them with a loving mind!
On the measureless earth, on the one road of compassion,
saving people and other beings,
our loving brothers, the animals,
the birds and trees,
have always shown us kindness.
1980-1982
'(
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
!!!
My son grew up on the grassy steppe,
contemplated things beneath the high heavens.
He shared the melancholy of the autumn grasses,
and listened to the whisper of the silent stars!
My son grew up on the wild steppe,
smelt the pasque flower's late blooms, became a man!
He sipped the waters of the streams and played amid the river's rocks.
He grew used to the silence of beauty!
He was modest when compared to the hills.
He was intelligent when talking with the mountains, great and small.
From the first, he was acquainted with every road,
he drank from the dark-eyed springs!
He loved the galloping herds of wild beasts, throwing up dust,
and, sorrowful among the cranes, felt pity for his own mother!
The world and the steppe, his country became his home,
and the starry night brought my son peace!
My son grew up on the grassy steppe,
his inheritance were the wild steppe and the autumn harvest!
The starry heights and the gently packed snows
and the stories of winter nights were my son's friends!
He thought the stones of his ancestors' land were like a heart,
and, better still, he befriended the beasts,
hunted beneath the blue skies!
He read the wild steppe like a scholar's book,
gave life to young creatures when needed,
to willows and to springs!
My only son grew up with love upon the steppe,
the rocks and the autumn mountains educated him!
My son grasped loveliness and elegance from columns of swans,
my son searched for greatness in the depths of the eternal sky!
Nature, my mother, the one and only university
bright, modest, powerful and elegant
please make of my little son Gangaa,
my very own work, a man, balanced within himself!
Moscow 1983
'*
FOR YOU
was leading you, one snowy midnight.
The world was flickering like stories,
and we were walking among the stars,
with snow falling on our faces.
We were heading into the future,
our children falling from the distant stars,
like snowflakes, like stories. And,
in the morning, we were joined eternally.
You, a little girl, had become mother to my children.
waited for you on the path through the world.
On many moonlit, moonless nights, there were sounds far off.
My love for you was unconstrained,
not as my lover, casually, but as my wife.
Peaceful you were, and gentle, and loved you naturally.
You gave me children on the springtime grass.
Within your hot tears, became a man.
feel you in my body, know you in my mind.
When see you, know you, and when touch you, know you.
Twenty years ago, we two greeted the snowfall winter,
and our paths remained two.
followed the way which showed me Heaven.
My love, you were a girl of this world.
Among the snowfall stars,
you and are moving onwards, over the river of time,
over the bridge which shows Heaven..
Out of the depth between the silent stars, snow is falling on our faces.
You and are moving onwards..
5 x 84
'!
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
MOTHER TONGUE
A culture should not forget the language in which it is raised.
A people should not leave their homeland until death.
D Natsagdorj
If today my mother tongue should perish,
Tomorrow, I should die.
Rasul Gamzatov
My mother tongue is like independent heroes.
My mother tongue is the seat of the mortal soul.
My mother tongue has inspired my ancestors to victory.
My mother tongue has remained in fame for centuries and centuries..
n my mother tongue, my ancestors dwell among my descendants.
ts great merit has not been worn away by the rain or the wind.
Listen to the silence of our mother tongue, hear our ancestors breath!
Trust in the magic of the living words, hurrying out of the distant past!
The mother tongue has the ability to heal body and mind.
The mother tongue has the power to light a spark of talent in the past.
My mother tongue washes omens in the gentle rays of speech.
My mother tongue sends me into the future on the golden ship of thoughts.
We know that the sky is blue beyond the white clouds.
We know that springs's flowers are growing beneath the winter's snow.
We hear in my mother tongue
the rustling of the leaves of a hundred autumns,
and the call of six thousand cranes are gathered there together.
We know that in my mother tongue my distant relatives are sleeping.
n future times, on this golden earth,
men will be born from my mother tongue.
The Mongolian language mixes with the sound of silver bridles on the earth,
such fresh clarity, like the blue of the eternal sky.
Oh, the beautiful Mongolian language!
The melody of my parent's speech,
hear it gently, gently in the distant haze of stars.
The vicious enemy who kills our people attacks our mother tongue.
'"
Two hundred fifty years the sun stood guard and,
even when the Mongolian language was threatened,
the powerful fortress of my invincible mother tongue
blocked the path,
shredding the attack with its knife of sublime import!
My mother tongue, like the sun and moon shining on the snowbound peaks.
Though a million million years may pass, my mother tongue,
and we move on, still you remain.
But we journey deep into our mother tongue, as into a mine!
Beneath the shining sun, please search for us
in the depths of our mother tongue!
5 viii 84
'#
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
THE PEOPLE'S SONG
The song of my people is precious and held by none.
t attracts the autumn birds, circling in the sky, with its beautiful sound.
Resting for a while, swallow the rhythm like a cool drink,
as if resting from the summer's heat in the shade of a limetree.
To all who hear my people's song, it is like casting rocks from the mind.
Their life grows longer, and underfoot the earth grows broader..
Traversing the ages upon the melody of my ancestors' yearning,
speak gently with them, tears flowing in compassionate eyes.
Rowing down the rivers of the people's timeless song,
move across time, taking the elders' yearning,
and , the brown hawk with power in its wings, speak of my people.
know the knife is not the firesmoke, know the song to be victorious,
and so pray.
The bird of song flies through life, creates all things,
it sinks from a distance into us, and into our descendants,
and the voice of the people, my wise elders, sings out,
hooray! hooray!
We imagine the juncture of meaning and sense, that it has passed!
The song of my people is lovely,
like a horseman galloping across the steppe,
it pacifies the mind while we have breath,
it brings us closer to Heaven.
Oh, like the hills of many secrets is the song of my people..
Slowly walk down the tracks of the world in which live.
The song of my people is precious and held by none.
The old are weeping, for the secret cure is pertinent to all things!
n a single moment it brings life which has passed below Heaven,
such power sinks into the people's song
and we deny it until death!
1983
'$
A POEM WRITTEN IN THE MOONLIGHT
The moonlight strikes the surface of an autumn lake.
While this sight awakens in me a slight melancholy,
watch the earth, glistening in the light of the full moon,
and consider the meaning of our birth, our path through life!
Even amid empty space, the magic of light is lovely.
Taken in by the lovely oscillation of bewitching colors,
in my nanve youth,
wondered that the moonlight was not the moon.
n my joyful laughter, my eyes shone in the bright light of the earth.
Standing in the center of my ancestors' thoughts, their ideas perfect,
think about the world and the behavior of people, honor subtle thought.
The earth changes thousands of times as it turns, and they are absent,
but are dwelling now amongst us, in our minds!
do not praise eyes of happiness,
rather the light which comes into the mind,
and drive away wicked thoughts with the elders' teaching..
The flowers of my pure, fresh mind develop on paper,
move into the skyblue distance,
to be gathered by my descendants.
My ancestors gave to me neither an unsung song, nor sadness.
Praise the wise and not the famous, entrust to them humane activity!
They understand that,
among the people born today are people from before.
The leaves that wither on the full earth are the beginning of new leaves!
think how every morning is the beginning of life.
imagine that every evening is the end of life..
The beginning and the end continue what exists with neither start nor finish,
it is the eternal circle of the turning world.
trust in the strength of the human mind, rather than in marble.
think of its wondrous creations,
and the scholars who have absorbed them.
compare this body with the melancholy lake of autumn,
liken to the moon all that is brought into its warm light!
'%
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
The colored moon is too far away to reach, but its light touches us here.
The scholars of antiquity are no longer with us, but send their wisdom!
n the deep darkness, is the mind attracted to the waters of the lake?
n the light of the moon, protecting us from a strange land,
do we not perceive the fullness of its beauty?
1983
'&
AUTUMN
a lyric fantasy
Autumn is my favorite season. t is a time when the world is silent, when
the grasshoppers rasp upon the wild steppe, when cold clarity shines in the
sky, when riverwater is pure, when quite suddenly the human mind gazes
at the distant mountains and a shiver of fear passes deep inside the body. t
is a time too when the color of the yellowed and withered grass seeps into
one's body and mind, when the weeping of returning birds !lls the heart.
Thinking about these things, considering the past and the present, imagine
with love the stones, the vegetation, the horses and livestock. dwell in,
and know all things belonging to, this world and seek the one cord joining
all things within the world.
n autumn, feel myself joined with nature, it is as though extend into the
blue breadth of the sky. n this world there is not one distinct body called ,
am dissolved into the admixture of land and sky, am gently absorbed into
it and am captured in the melancholy of space and time.
think sadly then, the song of the cranes turns the hairs on my head grey
one by one, it is as though the wind ripples out of my sighs. Dariganga's
many hills are physically near to me and "ow out in waves from among
the autumn grasses. Herds of wild animals gallop off, throwing up the dust,
awakening their pride, and for me to see this is feels like the most beautiful
of events. think of the delight feel when the warm autumn sun warms my
back, how some twenty years before an animal became a human, how my
mother awoke into a future world, how spoke with her, think of her alive,
feeling that person as living in my mind and also that dead person as living
in my mind. When am not, my grandmother will be in the black shadow of
forgetting, she will be living in me, inside my thoughts and, as think how
am continuing her life, suddenly am a man who has children. am happy
that am continuing without a break this ancient situation upon the earth,
relish stepping upon the withered and yellowing vegetation, saunter along
the bare track, over the gravel and it is only as penetrate the melancholy
mind of time..
And so, this was my beginning in these times of great hardship. nsofar
as was present at that moment, the root of my being present had been
ranging far and near, throughout a thousand thousand years, down towards
''
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
the time of my forebears' forebears, they who granted me my vigor. So,
in those million years previously, what kind of creature had been? And,
a poor creature, after a million years of sauntering along beneath the
autumn sun so as to be born, was preparing myself for being born into this
world. Thinking about the ones who had gone into the depths of time, the
thousands of eons of my ancestors, was the continuation of animals and
humans, and was also father to a million years of humans in the future.
The blue sky bears witness to this. grew affected by such thoughts, that
there is nothing other than this lineage which is deathless and invincible,
and thought deeply about the signi!cance of my coming into the world and
the moment of my living here.
Oh, autumn.. know that cannot wrong anyone in the least, wonder
at how weak am, but the day exerts an in"uence with its warmth, but also
with its melancholy, my mind is renewed and feel a change in my body.
But the sky, cold and blue, is shining in the far distance. don't understand
its secret, feel distressed in body and mind, overwhelmed by my lack of
power.
"Gangaa was talking in his sleep one night, he called out Daddy! He
was an alert child. n the morning comforted him, he was crying, he said,
I dreamt was going something with my father, and father suddenly wasn't
there, he had gone outside to pee, and then I.. Thinking about this, many
months later in the writing of my wife about how my little son had been
waiting for me, realised that all creatures create a single world, however
great or small their happiness or sadness may be. n this world, others
cannot do this, one can only experience it for oneself, and how ever much
suffer because of this, realise that am unable to provide comfort to the
mind of my son when he thinks of me, and the phrase the !ight of study
comes to mind.
am wandering along the narrow path,
heading towards school under the yellow sun.
This day, this path, this sky
why is my heart worried?
The streets are warm, the trees golden,
and the shoes on my feet grey with dust.
The withered bodies of the plants, in their !nal moments,
are sad, fading away under the autumn sun.
Our homeland, the exhausted steppe stretches out..
The mind bobs a little in a slight, light wind..
The call of "ocks and "ocks of cranes fade into the sky..
())
Why do wander through life,
watching the peaks of distant mountains?
The golden leaves of autumn begin to fall -
oh, it is too, too obvious,
am not tired as watch upon the steppe,
do not reach the edge of this world,
and, as the sky grows wider in the mind,
it is like the sound of "awless porcelain.
wrote this poem in my mind, as walked beneath the yellow sun,
thinking about my son.
"My love, as watch the clouds, moving in from the north-west,
wonder about your health. am continuing to think about Kalidasa's Cloud
Messenger. 'How can express the sorrow in my heart as leave you, with
a "eeting glance?' 'And when we meet, we shall enjoy beneath the light
of the autumn moon all that we desired whilst separated.' 'What creatures
say to one another, in separation, when they loose their minds, constitute a
thousand lies. The desires of a loving mind, in separation, accumulate more
and more. Considering all of this, it pleasant to stop and think, and want
to read in this poem how you send words into the clouds with kindness and
love and how, from the space of the clouds, a reply comes to you in the
shining of the sun.
My romantic pleasure: the letter wrote was the catalyst for several ideas,
these few thoughts, how Kalidasa's Cloud Messenger was written in this
world and at one time. We experience this moment, even though it remains
in a distant sector of boundless time, it as though we are hearing Kalidasa's
breathing. We also certainly have the moment when Natsagdorj wrote "The
Decline of Birds. Whenever we read "The Decline of Birds we repeat this
moment of Natsagdorj, that is to say, we see that human experience is
eternal, that it remains always.
Whenever we read Homer, Homer comes back to us and we ful!ll the
enjoyment of several thousand years ago, and our mouths repeat the
names of Hector and Achilles. Oh, thinking of how this is without end or
beginning, the words of the poet Gombin Ser-Od, who died at twenty-three,
come to mind:
The green couchgrass, tossing in tassels in the cool, gentle wind,
recalls the lapping layers of waves over all the ocean.
The world knows in its gut, it removes its armor of vegetation, and
the cricket's metallic crickcrick sings the autumn.
()(
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
Repeating this verse brings to mind precisely the moment when young
Ser-Od wrote this precise verse. Wandering in time and space, this special
moment of listening to the rhythm of this man's warm heart, understand
Ser-Od's feeling in my gut and, catalysed by the world's armor and by the
cricket's crickcrick, my enjoyment is ful!lled.
Who knows where or how Ser-od existed following his death? Clearly,
Ser-Od's poetry remains with us, and his body was buried in Mongolia.
How does Ser-Od, now dead, pass down to us this image of an autumn
some time during the 1930s? This is the eternal magic of poetry, which
does not preserve the author forever, but preserves his enjoyment of
beauty in people's minds through the image of the loveliness of autumn. t
produces good thoughts in a person and thus the person becomes good.
We shout to all who experience the world which the poet has seen that this
preserves the image of Ser-Od, who has given to us this sweet and lovely
moment for posterity!
"My love, thinking of the happiness of the days spent with you, wonder
what is true and what false.
But am truly happy. The earth blesses us with days. And these were
really the days of favorable stars! Gathered around the !re on the mountain
peak.the trees rustling in the forest and the song of the birds, the pleasure
of two ordinary butter"ies. oh, really there are many memories and, in
fact, nothing is unremembered. What a great joy!
This is what the person love most in the world has written. Signi!cantly,
she sent Ser-Od's poem and, as read through it, thought of Ser-Od, and
there came to me the period in the 1930s when Ser-Od also went through
it.
" am thinking how, day by day, you are further away from me and am
afraid, my weak eyes !lled with tears. But think how, just as the moment
gets further away, time comes to me and, moment by moment, gets closer,
and grow peaceful.. And so it is that now hear these words in my ears.
This autumn day, am happy to love someone and, in the act of missing
her, reach her. Reading her letter over and over, feel that open her up to
myself, that she opens me up. sit there, thinking about the beautiful eyes
of the woman who wrote these lines. am not far away from the distant
years of my childhood, and moment by moment, move towards it.
Moscow 1983
()*
IN THE COMPLEX OF THE WORLD
Showing their vast power and might,
the mountains range towards the east.
The ancient city of the clouds hums, moving towards the west..
t travels ahead of the unwavering hawk..
t moves swiftly behind the changeable wind!
The boy, carrying a cap,
stands upon the cliff and meditates upon one thing.
Two women, one young, one old,
are whispering about it in the shadows..
Beneath my feet a pine needle shifts with a sound..
And am watching the sun among the pines on the lower slopes..
The pine-children are growing near to me, butterflies on their new shoots,
and walk around in the castle of the world which has made me.
The pink lily in the crevace of the cliff glows like an ember,
the flies and insects of the round world hum,
the grey wormwood shimmers, and, every day,
in the great mountains, restore myself..
The clouds and the sun, seated upon the high world, fade amid the pines.
The peace of the sky's tent fills my body and mind.
The vigor of the vast mountain joins with my thoughts..
absorb the beauty of a yellow flower, whose name don't know.
And the ants and the rocks are friends in the secret complex of the world!
'm watching with bated breath the overhanging row of pines,
and, for one moment,
imagine the earth's breath sinking into me.
Ulaanbaatar 1983
()!
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
AUTUMN'S WISDOM
The rays of the sun weave a golden pattern on the tent wall,
and the cold, clear waters of the autumn stream glitter as
though flaunting themselves.
The grass on the banks are hiding their sadness,
whispering their lives to one another.
How quickly this summer has passed, casting the mind's noose far away?
The silent, red hills doze, wishing for the summer that's gone,
and the yellow,
fox-hued wind sobs upon my wild and peaceful steppe.
Sheltering in the whitefaded stone of the cliff, and a little sad,
a horse, doubly hobbled, fans lazily at its belly with its tail.
A cool wind blows down the river and a woman, collecting dung,
is muttering to herself.
A young man, thinking of his lover gone far away, sighs deeply. n the distance,
the clear and boundless sky shines a cold blue,
and gaze upwards at the cliff,
hoping to reach there.
Though everything is cold in the season 'm thinking of, it is also clear,
and only in autumn do come to the river bank,
listening to my thoughts.
hear the melody of the world, and hold in my body the earth's beauty.
The beginning of September is the golden time,
the moment when the human mind is pure!
Drinking the waters of the stream from a silver cup is like drinking jewels,
and, dispersing the tune through my body,
collect the waters for myself.
Though sad, my heart and mind gather to themselves the fresh wind,
and sit and absorb the air into my brain,
like the medicine of the steppes.
Sitting at the corner of the borderless world, adapt to the earth's beauty.
The young man is chewing grass,
tuning his pleasure in the world with the rasping of crickets.
()"
A yellow dog trots along, stalking down the marmot's lair,
barking as it stares at the horizon,
barking at nothing in particular,
it turns round, as though expecting no reply.
Breaking off some grass, tucking it between his toes, the young man
dwells below the blue sky, wonders if he does,
or does not know what it all means.
While the golden rays of the September sun are patterning the river,
he works out what is true
and what is false and crafts profundity in his mind.
Baruun Urt 1983
()#
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
AUTUMN AND TIME
a lyric fantasy
n the gentle locusts' song, welcoming the autumn, the grasses fade
without a sound. The feathergrass is iridescent, and the sky is blue and
perfectly silent.
am standing in the ruins of Manzushiriin Khiid, looking at the broken
remains of the temple, the large dark stones lying here and there, worn
smooth by the wind and the sun. From time to time, a warmth strokes the
chill wind.
t's autumn. There's a slight grey cloudiness to Heaven, a few birds are
circling in the distance and am enjoying the freedom in the breadth of the
deep skies. The birds should have the pleasures of birds and people should
have the pleasures of people, and who can speak of the relative enjoyment
of standing barefoot upon the earth and upon stones warmed by the sun?
You trust that where you are standing is at the center of the world and
feel like am standing in an ancient temple, the water gurgling and dripping
from stone faucets, as though their every sound is an offering of the world's
peace!
The whitened grasses of autumn sway, what delicate thoughts are there
in the depths of the mind, which disturb everything, bring distant years
closer and carry my now away?
People yammer away in foreign languages, they wave their fingers about,
they talk of how they enjoy the earth so much and then, it seems, the
shutter on their camera clicks.
n this world of everlasting peace, this dark and imposing environment,
nature is thought of as having great power.
A foreign girl, in a red shirt and blue trousers, is standing over there, in
the shadow of the temple, her shimmering beauty does not amaze its own
great majesty, which seems small amidst the mountains. They balance one
the other.
Looking up, it is as though a thousand years are in these traces, these
cliffs above the ridges on the Heaven-touching mountains, and they are still
and silent.
()$
n this magnificent environment, untroubled images of the ancient
buddhas gaze compassionately upon us from the stones, over many
centuries, rather than being washed away, they have been made clearer
by the rain. My ancestors used to say that the buddhas knew the endless
secrets of wisdom and creativity. The thick noise of the mountain rivers can
be heard, not far away but vast. Threads branch out from them in many
directions, weaving around rocks, or else playing out their own small
tunes down all the flowing streams, raking the vegetation with their shining
waters.
Rapids.white foam.red beetles with black spots blazing in the grass,
everything unifies their power within the natural world, nature is awake,
is listening to itself, inviting us into itself, calling us with the rasping of
grasshoppers.
am standing among the many stones, enjoying the happiness of living
creatures, the rhythm of time lingering amongst the rocks, tweaking the
mind inch by inch.
There is time in all things. A person stands on a cliff, his mind churns, the
river flows, the grass fades, everything is in its sway.
t is as though the temples where the noble ones had dwelt had preserved
their shadows and their smells, the wind moaned through the cracks, nettles
and weeds grew dense and occasionally thought it was like an ancient
Roman barracks.
An overhang jutted out from the mountain, among the trees which were
beginning to turn yellow, a single white birch stood out in its thick yellow
costume, it seemed there was a fire blazing on the cliffs.
This environment lacked its ancestors, and in the ruins of the temple it
was as though time's fragments were congealing.
There was grass growing through the cracks, walked up the stone steps,
counting them one by one. A broken wall of bricks, like an odd arrangement
in stone.its own poem, in a trice. But this was not the true image of the
Coloseum in Rome, of the city of Troy as rendered into verse by Homer, the
ruins which remained touched the mind, we might imagine that when they
were broken, their beauty was woken into abstraction. The cliff's red scree
called up sad memories. Had buddha-like Roerich come here, just as he
had opened up the great majesty of ndia to others, he would have settled
here for some time, recording with his painter's brushes the perfection
and secret nature of our Mongolian homeland. The grey dust of the years
descends. And so, when a perfect peace prevails in the world, the one-
()%
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
time vagabonds and wanderers will emerge from amidst the grey mists of
history.
read books in the skyblue stones, and there comes a time when the
stardust is swept away and the tracks of the wise are awakened.
Writing on the ruins of Manzushiriin Khiid, praise the indestructible
genius of my people, celebrate with the autumn skies.
among the ruins of Manzushiriin Khiid, Tuv aimag
1 ix 85
()&
AN AUTUMN MORNING
n the bright clarity of an autumn morning,
stand alone on a rock beside the river.
Way off, the ancient skies are silent, and an old rider on a horse jigjogs
along the path towards the mountain.
n the sadness of the rocks, lying in one place for a thousand years,
the river bubbling up from underneath them flows so pure.
The dark tune of autumn brings a shiver to the deep and clear mind.
The daughter of the sun does not wish to caress my manly body with her
warm rays, and the walls of the ger,
patterned in flowing rivers,
do not kiss the sunlight to warm themselves.
Before go study in a foreign land,
'll absorb the memories of my homeland into my heart.
The larks are not tired, they plait through the smoke from the gers
in the early morning sky, they sing the dawn,
their weave of melody is their blessing upon work!
On the pale and rocky land,
why does the hills' every thought distress the heart?
Nowhere will the dust of ages die away,
what was it that people did not desire?
t is through their own will, not by way of the wind,
that they are searching on the path of creation,
and the many fine hills perhaps will be worn
and worn away.
An old and wild horse gallops towards the border of the sky, vanishes,
as though absorbed into
the broad skyblue of the darkening mountain range.
That poor old horse's forebears are also among these hills worn down,
and he has jogged perhaps into a distant moment,
faded into the blue smoke?
And, browsing nearby, the forebears of the hobbled brown horse
cast up the dust of this world as the stars pass by,
()'
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
long and loud they whinny.
And maybe, cantering at the double, his wise master takes him far away?
Now, then, off in the skyblue distance,
are the horse and his rider exhausted?
And now, though am about to pursue them on my steed of understanding,
they are hidden in the mists of invisibility,
they are covered by time's curtain.
Their ancestors ambled later down this path,
a century in a flash of lightning.
With a sweet voice, they soften the morning sky, as their elders had done.
Although this strange beauty is every time taken away,
it is absorbed once more into what remains.
My ancestors lived in these surroundings in another time,
but will their ancient world not return with the sun and the moon?
Baruun Urt
20 viii 82
(()
!!!
The snow-white gers are as though permeated by the chill wind,
the hillocks tune in to noise, as though taken in by a distant mirage,
the river flows leisurely on, as though bored with the autumnal earth,
the old people walk slowly, as though wearied by how they are aged,
the beginning of the season of cold affects every creature, and
the wings of migrating birds spread out, and the blue skies of autumn!
The indistinct clouds almost meld with the mists of autumn,
the swirling herds of horses reach almost to the edge of Heaven.
Mothers in a circle outside the tent whisper prayers for the journey,
and their sons, away into the bright distance,
stand at the point of their prayers.
Oh, our children are melancholy for the life of times past,
and the daytime moon brims silence over on the distant path.
Baruun Urt
10 ix 82
(((
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
AN AUTUMN DAY
n the bright depths, the colored stones are beautiful,
and the autumn riverwater ripples pristine.
dip my hand in, and the cool clarity suffuses my whole body,
and a myriad of winds relay through me.
The vegetation bows against the fluttering wind,
and the waters gently make of one rhythm an ancient pattern.
Now and again, a sadness is imagined beneath the Heavens,
and the eyes of a girl glimmer and pierce the years.
Me and Ganaa, both fifteen,
are hanging out with our shadows one evening,
just the four of us.
When we dream of the sweet earth,
it is like our childhood has flown away.
We whisper stories amid the ruins of an old temple,
amuse ourselves in the cold moonlight.
We share a single sweet, scrunching up the wrapping,
each of us wanting to give the other the bigger portion.
The grass is bitter to chew,
and our palms are cold when we stroke the stone lions.
These two uneven little hearts are warm,
the luster of distant stars fills our eyes,
and our two little bodies, our two little desires,
stand at the start of the years.
And, listening for the neighing of thoroughbreds,
Ravjaa lights the candle of the mind.
The young girl laughs until the quartz clacks.
She appears there, standing in the rainbow of my thoughts.
n the haze of long ago, a rain of starry stories, and
the children of my age were horses in the meadow at the
bottom of my heart.
came to the horses, bringing a young girl,
came to bind a rainbow from the depths of skyblue stars..
The stars flow with song, laugh at the girl from deep skyblue Heaven,
and discover magic on the back of a galloping steed!
((*
Now the yellow shirt is too small for my son,
now the little girl has grey hair,
and amid these wonderful thoughts,
seem to see a dance of happy dreams.
appreciate the little things which birth me on this earth, as though,
gazing at the sunny blue mountains,
my mind was flowing with water!
n the bright depths, the colored stones are beautiful,
and the autumn riverwater ripples pristine.
Because have come to this shining world, make things pure in this way,
take part in life!
The gentle autumn wind, and a man's body is weakened.
The gentle eastern steppe, and the saddlehorse has gone lame.
The late evening sky, and a column of cranes is heading away.
The skyblue southern mountains, and the hills are standing out!
The outline of gazelles, clear among the mirages.
Mysterious white ger, traveling in the distance, side by side.
A gentle wind, rippling upon the salty lake.
The first willow around the spring, always appearing in dreams!
A girl of seventeen, coming back with water.
The first shy memories, a meeting with harmonious love.
A gentle sadness from before, remaining in my heart.
My one memory, unrepeatable in another life!
An omen bellowed by a camel calf, near to the saltmarsh.
A story has whipped the mind into shape on the fiddle's two strings.
An ancient, wandering poem, given form in the dusk.
Friends met together on the earth, the balance of destiny!
Thinking about it now, fifteen years are like a story,
a small boy in a colorful shirt, running on the steppe.
The closer you get to Heaven's magic border, the farther away it is.
Life's secret is more difficult to understand!
((!
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
AN AUTUMN EVENING
An autumn evening,
and white clouds are floating in slow groups across the distant sky.
The wind,playing around me, is gentle on my ears,
and here and there the grass ripples green.
Truly the world has no borders, gentle like a kiss of the mind's rapids.
My body is relieved, as though discovering eternal dawn beneath the sky,
've grasped the calf's tail, admire my child.
And oh, why do strive,
why do measure my own time in borderless spacetime?
cannot seek refuge in anyone,
my mind moves me among the openness of white clouds,
Quietly, watch a woman, busy washing cloth in the river and drying it,
her strong legs, her graceful body, a poem comes to me then.
The sound of the water flowing over the stones, the floating leaves,
the sun's rainbow,
sense her loveliness from the infant purity of her body,
and we could say that sadness was forgotten in the dawn.
Life goes on, the world continues,
her delicate hands wring the washed cotton, the world,
this stone house,
reveals itself in the stream in which the colors of
Heaven are gathered.
This woman sits beside the river like a swan,
her pure hands embrace the ancestors,
and worship this divine beauty, this living poem,
and let out a sigh.
kneel before this woman, who has taken in her hands the earth,
and fire, water and air,
pledge that there is nowhere a Buddha other than she.
Rows of white ger, like stars fallen from a nighttime sky.
Children at play, like visitors from daytime stars.
wonder that so clear an autumn evening is come to the world,
doubt that there is story and true action in this smile.
(("
n the world's womb, warmed by the setting sun for a million million years,
my father's line is more fortunate than in the great cosmos.
The mountains dissolved into the indistinct moon's evening light,
my father's seat, this autumn day,
does not show my heart's shadows.
Just as the river's current flows on unrepeating, when will it not be?
And, as the river cleanses even itself,
before cleansing the patterns of dawn,
so destiny is cast upon the current of humanity.
n the great universe of life they are born denying unity.
There is no river which, having thought to flow, flows backwards!
Moreover, time and people flow forward, they remain now,
passing below Heaven, moving into the future.
But the past, the present and the future are our conceptions,
and don't they who deny the threefold flow
of our one great time rush onwards,
down the runnels?
Baruun Urt
20 viii 82
((#
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
AN AUTUMN NIGHT
a lyric fantasy
am lying in a cloth tent. The autumn night blows a cool breeze around
its edges. The white moon is suspended from the branches of a pine and,
in the milky light, the white clouds move quickly quickly past, the fast "ow of
the mountain stream rushing past the edges of the tent.
The water and stones are engaged in a small battle, crashing against one
another. n the hay meadows, everything is silently sleeping, the mumbling
of pigeons clearly audible.
am lying down, reading from a collection of Polish verse by the light of a
candle. My poet friend Tsedendamba is snoring loudly, which amuses me.
The day was high on the warm scent of the stooked grass, tried to chew
a length of straw, but it was bitter, or seemed to be. The sky was a deep
blue, dazzling my eyes in the endless distance, the unreachable distance
came closer and imagined the wondrous autumn day moving through the
forested mountains.
An autumn night now.stepping barefoot, damp on the cold grass this
silvery night, and the strange thought comes to me as to what the squirrel
is doing now, who has seen the passing of the day.
On this autumn night, a single cycle of my life, my mind takes its rest
among the pines on the mountain, thinking to pursue the lover who remains
behind. Remember how the classical poet Guliransa says that "every
autumn, the scent is like grass in a temple. He feels the faithful love of
the woman left behind, her shining eyes, the soft kiss of her lips. Poor
Guliransa has gone away, he is not in this world. But am waiting for its
return, this life of mine is not !nished.
n the autumn chill, the fall of a single leaf is like a death.
We're told that, "while a sick person spends a day waiting, watching the
poplars through the hospital window, one by one, the leaves "y about, just
as, day by day, lives are harvested! And so, the leaves grow fewer..
The evening remains, rustling the golden leaves. The sick man speaks,
he says, "The leaves are breaking from this tree my body to complete the
body below. How many days before this ominous morning comes, a single
yellow leaf like this tree's tears, the scythe of autumn stays waiting.
(($
His friends watch him and feel pity for him, securely tying the single yellow
leaf to the branch with a silken thread, and this leaf has seen the surface of
the !rst snows. The sick man has not torn the leaf away and he is truly
happy, amazed, his mind at peace and, as the sad thoughts disperse, his
body becomes clearer. n the end, thinking of how his friends have helped
him, he says, "The things of the mind are very dif!cult in this world. When
this leaf was broken off, was really dying. But this didn't happen and
believed that the power of my mind was taking strength from the yellow
leaf. treated the leaf with honor, separating it from the tough threads, so
as to squeeze in between things a store of life.
The writer O Henry had a similar idea. Lying down one cool night at
the entrance to a mountain, he was the invisible lord of autumn, crawling
silently along, taking the leaves from the trees, as though preparing for the
coming spring's offering of new green leaves..
Lying down like this on an autumn night, my lover cannot sleep for
thinking about me in the far distance. Waiting alone, with what sadness
does she miss the warmth of my body which she has been hearing through
her life? n this world, one thing is necessary for a man, that the source
of his melancholic longing adds ounce for ounce to the value of his life.
admire Guliransa, for writing the following:
First autumn, the moon, high in the July sky,
shines in the pure spring's clear water pool.
The lama, meditating upon the composite, starts at the sound of a voice.
Writing a poem in the margins, the scribe is drunk upon the clear colors.
think that, having been born, he would want to relax in the shade of the
pines, around the spring in the light of the autumn moon, sharing a drink
from a single wooden cup.
So, from the time of njinashi, the autumn moon has been passed down
to me on the cool poetic breath of Natsagdorj, Ser-Od and Yavuukhulan.
Friends and others, my lovers too, suggest that am an internal person,
that for them would be a single yellow leaf, storing up life, that they are
joined to me by a thin, secret cord. And lie in my tent, in the candle's soft
glow, feeling that the many magic autumns of this world have each been
waiting for me in sequence.
The cool autumnal nights came through, leaving morning's hoarfrost on
the petals of "owers. But my mind was warm. Spring, with its "owers, was
coming back.!
((%
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
n the open land touched by the sun, a brown antelope is grazing.
am lying in a clearing, among the autumn woods.
Familiar leaves whispering down upon my head,
the delicate and beautiful hind moving up the mountain.
The grasses' silken tips are curious to the touch,
a single rosy leaf, like a daystar..
The leaves above me, in the teeth of the wind and,
above me, the hind's feet move gently away..
As though paying out golden pieces,
a reward for love in the six months of spring and summer,
the !ne, untamed poplar casts away its leaves.
The soft winds of autumn hold them,
like the sun's accountant, turning them in air.
6 iii 84
((&
!!!
was looking at you through the happy days of October,
the sands were humming,
a reddish light was sucked into the wind's whisper.
Waves in their thousands
and thousands pursued one another on the Ganga,
vanishing from the distant shore,
returning to disappear upon this shore.
was looking at you through the happy days of October,
your smiling lips opening like the petals of a flower, your return,
peaceful like the swans floating on the water,
the white clothes of a sweet and innocent girl, mixed with lakewater,
your gentle glance playing in the happy days of autumns still to come.
Strange, how we gather firewood in the slight movements of your smile!
The shadow of your lashes brings to mind ancient images.
My liege in white, waiting on the banks of a rainbow lake,
a fine woman, floating on the yellow-white waves.
Suddenly, the young man catches his breath in watching eyes,
your lashes' shadows bring ancient images to mind.
The red willows of the Ganga hide me, reveal the girl's loveliness,
see glistening thyme, rising up among the hills.
A lithe blue wedge of cranes calls from the skies to the girl,
a coney enters a bush of red cherry and blue artemesia,
and shifts its ears, as though gazing from behind
the girl with wise eyes.
She dived into the waters of Lake Ganga in the happy days of October,
that girl, lying out on the golden sands in her summer dress.
That girl, sixteen years old and lovely, has just dressed herself
and sits upon an overloaded cart, singing it forward,
and was looking at you, so industrious,
through the happy days of October!
You stayed barefooted on the hillpaths by day,
you gathered firewood,
you stroked the kids' muzzles with a gentle hand.
(('
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
For a day was happy to be on the sweet young girl's path.
The hills and the endless skies are happy, the Ganga is pale.
Those sweet hands gathering firewood bring back the hat
left in the sands!
The girl's palms gush up, like the petals of a late-blooming iris,
and there come patterns, created upon her body in golden sand.
The wind catches her short skirt, the girl is embarassed,
distracted, her eyelashes flutter like ears of barley.
Oh, those days of October, like gifts from the universe to me!
(*)
A BRIGHT MELODY
A !eld of undulating grain, moving like a small excited child. Waves of
yellow come billowing in from the edges of the skies and play at the feet of
my Animaa.
A pristine air rushes through the gullies, winds itself through the birch
trees and closely packed grasses. Like a young man calling his belovud,
the whistling of the wind sounds through the shining green forest.
Shaded from the sun, tasting the dark green leaves, hid away with
my Animaa. Perhaps there was a divine girl weeping, or perhaps it was
a shining dew, a tumble of golden droplets..A single magical moment of
heaven! A secret skyblue second of morning!
run barefoot through the meadows of dew, it is glorious, the "owers
offer sacri!ce, as though their lovely petals were softly nodding their
heads! Flower after "ower, meadow after meadow, the ravines loom up, the
powerful magic for my lover glimmers, and my passion starts to rise. The
"eeting shimmer of visions, the wondrous hamlets of the clouds glimmering
in my eyes, imagine the secret door of the skies opening, the edges of the
world, the place at which the skies begin. A sudden light "ashed in the blue,
it was as if was dreaming the world in the hidden and mysterious waves of
music through the four directions..
A slight concern began slowly to weigh upon my heart like a stone,
would return to my own world, bubbling with springwater. But saw the
joyful smile of the Buddha, the stars "ashing upon my forehead.
1980
(*(
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
AN EVENING DREAM
As the hills rose up, rose up like a fading tune, dissolving into the fullness
of evening, the darkness swallowed and swallowed everything that saw
around me and, sitting quite alone in a rock shelter, was watching you
upon the earth.
The clear blinking and glistening of a single distant star, the melancholy
wind whistled more and more and wanted to give up my voice to the
soughing which seemed now and then to touch the edge of my ear..
The deep green stars take from among these stars a path, maybe the
Milky Way, they shake their silver dust, they shine over the emptiness and
in the darkness, stretching out their hands over the back of a magical brown
horse.
You come towards me, my mind becomes distracted and forget these
images. Your white clothes flash in the twilight, but what is it that is heard
only in my heart, approaching like light steps, like an hallucination, throbbing
through my life? A space from fifteen years earlier was opened up, the flow
of time turned backwards and the moonlight fell upon the cold stones!
While watched the stones, stroking them, what was it that drew the
beautiful moonrays, like orphaned birds, into the shelter of a cliff?
The leaves spread beneath my feet, the branches of the ancient poplar
fan out. Silently, before blind eyes, a single leaf fell onto prayerful hands.
Oh, where did the first leaf go? t is as though the motile gaze of these
tender, sparkling eyes was watching me from within the silence.the earth
is growing weak.
Oh, it's as though something from within the silence is mocking me! s it
autumn leaves which are a string of tears on the distant quivering branches,
the golden lashes of distant stars.?
18 xii 81
(**
OMENS
When the moon rises, the dogs bark.
The cold rays of the moon struck the dogs' eyes and they grew as though
excited by something strange, and it was as though, in the distance, a small
ray of light became joined with these creatures.
The waves of time "ow from the dogs' eyes and the silver of the moonlight
"uctuates within my heart and the rain of melancholy !lls my body and
mind.
The dog is a distant omen, a warning, the secret key to a fear far away.
Tears course down from their eyes in the silence, their two ears hang down,
there is no life here for a dog, it is created by them wherever they go.
The melody of the moonlight comes into the dogs' hearts and, when they
have intercourse, it is as though the world is void of human thought, as
though the mind is lost, and a strange feeling scatters through the bodies of
the dogs.
When the moon rises, the dogs bark. From within the storm of cold blue
brightness, the dogs seek the phantom and seek into a state of oblivion.
When the moon rises, the dogs bark. And, as this world disappears into
mystery..
18 xii 81
(*!
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
WHEN THE MOON RISES.
When the moon rises grow sad, my body becomes exhausted. The rain
of thoughts teem down amid the new rays as much as amid the ancient
ones.
When the moon rises grow sad, the leaves of the poplars whisper softly,
softly. The waters of the river "ow gently, gently. The leaves of the poplars
stir the breeze, the waters of the river glisten their stories forth.
When the moon rises grow sad, the dogs bark. The thundering of the
horses, as they rise and fall over the hills, cause the golden stars to fall into
the water. My heart, beating out the time, is in every moment in "ight, and
remain. From one point of view, am in the vanguard. The vast totality of
the vegetation, the moon, the white haze means that, in the world, all things
commingle and shine in the moonlight blue. By way of the moonlight, life
presents me with love and melancholy.
Oh, perhaps it's too much for me, but it's just right too. When the moon
rises grow sad, and this sadness of mine brings forth poems, as though a
child were born.
When the moon rises, grow sad. recall how looked upon the ruins of
an old temple, the site for a ger pressed down among the wormwood, any
number of dark-hued stones,
They say that there was a monastery here. t's gone.the immensity
of time "ows on, the distant future is over here. As though striving for the
stars, the "ues of the round white gers throw up sparks.
When the moon rises, grow sad. My body becomes exhausted. The
dogs bark. The thundering of horses is heard.
When the moon rises grow sad.yes, when the moon rises!
Baruun Urt
12 vii 78
(*"
!!!
The white night is sleeping like a foal, resting its head on the rocks in the
river. Not even the miserable donkey awakens it, nor the jangling iron cart
of the water. Was this night sent by the khaan, like his belovud lady is it
resting here?
Not even the Buddha knows the answer. But, after the rain, sleep evades
me. am a young man, so work at night. t's like the needle of time. Night
is "ying, its wings white..
The cliffs gather close to the "ow of the river, the night sleeps soundlessly.
The lapdogs nearby fear waking it, they gather in their voices. The "ow
of the river lullabies the night with endless stories. A sudden shift might
endanger the night. Far away it "ies. am thinking..Life is tough. The night
sleeps, but how come do not? f slept, the night would kidnap me. The
white night is sleeping like a foal, resting its head on the rocks in the river.
Like a woman, this earth is waiting for an answer from Heaven!
1978
(*#
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
ON THE RIVERBANK
An autumn night, and a girl stands on the riverbank.
Though am thinking about something to do with the sweet life of water,
the palms of this girl, like dancing leaves,
are waiting to take my very life from the months
and the years..
am swayed by the silence of the gushing stream.
Perhaps this dear girl of mine is cold and will come to where shelter.
There is no life for me to watch go past, it is like a vague dream!
Should it be true, shall lead my destiny by the hand..
The warmth of life is not to be felt, but counted in the air.
Oh, this cold wisdom annihilates all that is beautiful in my mind.
The pathless path of no beginning is but a track, absorbed into the dark,
and humans and animals do not come to die!
She takes pleasure, and the smiling of her lips fades away.
She takes pleasure, and she wipes from her cheeks the tears she's wept.
Sadness and a distracted mind are no measure of a life,
and would be happy to stand with
this girl of mine on an autumn night!
Like a horse presented as a gift, this life is an incomplete idea.
The body enjoys it, the mind finds pleasure in it,
and then the time is gone.
This life of mine, its sorrows unhidden, is hard like a cliff.
do my part, sing and smile through my weeping eyes!
do not see the teeth of the horse presented as a gift by my friends.
t's down to me whether see this life of mine as good, or bad.
My constant wish: that might be lord of this headstrong colt!
dismount, hurtling downwards.
How wish could stay on board like a man!
An autumn night, and a girl stands on the riverbank.
Though am thinking about something to do with the sweet life of water,
The hot palms of this girl, like dancing leaves,
Are waiting to take my very life from the months and the years..
(*$
from AN AUTUMN FANTASY
Taking over from the elders,
I come into this world.
This is the time to perform my eternal duties.
I do not speedily return, but in the world remain.
I walk barefoot in the grass,
I whisper beneath the high sun,
I lullaby a cradled child,
and carry out the worlk I have to do.
O D
enter on a level thick with thought. do not say
that the soft moon, the dew on grass, the wings of insects,
the barbs which pierce my feet as walk without thought,
or the grass stooked in empty meadows are absent to me.
move among the things which make the world complete.
The blessud earth encircled me, once had come,
and bowed to people, beasts, waters, larks and to the air,
and to the sheen of snow and to the warmth of fire.
was unable to break even the blue gentian on the taiga,
and my fingers were like those of a child of five.
couldn't break even a blade of white grass,
and it seemed had taken a life over the ages.
live upon a level thick with imaginings.
cherish the rainy evenings, the mown meadowgrass,
cajole the trotters of wild boar with withered hay.
However it is, live in my environment.
take my share each morning from the golden sun, and
clarify every life from the depths of this world.
n the peaceful night leave time behind, and
reside upon the secret level of the sphere of silence.
Although cover up my thoughts,
they emerge on Heaven's skyblue steppe,
and remain in the sky's breadth,
(*%
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
indulging both the sun and the moon,
and watch from the vehicle of life,
amidst both truth and dreams,
and send my heart's summons to all things everywhere.
Though, like a candle, my burning finishes in the world of elegant thought,
the moment of my shining is valuable to the world.
Because leave on a level thick with thought, even a fly is familiar.
did not come to this world by accident, am in the universal register!
have made the world on a level thick with imaginings,
trust that will feel sadness even for the withered grass.
did not flick away this one mosquito -
you think we see this change on planet Earth?
4 viii 84
(*&
THE MAGICAL EARTH
Today's moon, in this clear sky day, in the middle month of autumn,
watches me quite silently,
passing stealthily among the white clouds..
f you look carefully, the Lord of Autumn is riding a gullshaped moonboat,
it's like he's hanging around in the deep Heavens,
looking for something!
My eye falters in the deep blue sky, entranced by the beyond, there lie.
What are these poor people,
so great and yet so small beneath the skies?
lie in the grass of the cloudmoving sky, startling flies and mosquitos.
travel in rare thought into the deep sky,
try to equalise my body with theirs,
and the streams in the nearby mountains,
the rocky rapids, begin their music.
look at parts of the old white mountain, it's like 'm partitioning life..
t's like this world is everywhere distracted and in sorrow..
am amazed by the universe's form, how all is of the body of the earth.
So came to a stream, saw an old poplar fallen into the water, my
God, who severed the life of this tree like a white mountain flower?
An unseen hand has expedited nature's changing, truly
as though this had passed to us and quietly we had carried it out!
t seems as though, one pleasant day, the Lord of Autumn,
in his yellow boat of leaves, will return to the world along a river.
Who knows 'm thinking like this, about a tiny boat floating downstream?
Many stand and watch,
as though a soul were in the yellow boat of leaves!
So gaze up at the sky, as though the leafy form was there,
like the moon, and the moon's image left
for the river in the form of autumn leaves.
n a similar way, the perfect magical earth changes its form,
though it hides from me, a young vagabond,
may it dwell within me, and urge me on!

(*'
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
A THOUGHT
Watching the too bright sky, my mind clears up,
would take my son on a journey of immeasurable length..
Edged in a brocade of light, from the distant shining sun,
would absorb into the beauteous quartz white of the clouds..
The rugged mountains resound with the rasping of autumn locusts,
the rich blue of the aquilegia is wondrous to me.
Perhaps the marmot, fat with cotoneaster, feels sympathy for me,
so mediocre a hunter am, 'll not even kill a fly.
The world falls into autumn, pleasant and satisfying,
the couchgrass and feathergrass sway in deep green.
stroke the great burnet's brown head and scatter the seeds,
and the spanbroad snake slides through the grass.
Animals and insects feast together on the plants,
this remote homeland is like the wild sky..
Tsedendamba the poet laughs, echoing on the mountains,
and the sacrificial flowers rise from their dreams.
Happily follow the mountains, plateau upon plateau,
and the flowers, silent constantly,
shake their petals up and down.
Watching the too bright sky, my mind clears up,
am a guest among the wild flowers, come in from the distant stars..
7 viii 84
(!)
TESTAMENT
The way of leaves is to be in "ux.
like the autumn,
wake in the morning, stepping barefoot.
love the dewy grass.
The moment before the sun rises,
take shelter upon the hills.
The sky is blue in the deep silence,
and am wearing my hat.
Reading a poem in the wild stones,
notice an inscribed pattern..
The unsinging larks drink the dew,
relaxes upon the rhythmic world.
envy the woman's elegant waist
who draws water from the river.
My head is clear, my feet grow lighter,
and watch the mountains, great and small.
n the silver mornings of autumn freshness
walk, and my thoughts grow lighter.
The blue waters "oat back,
stop to greet the gorgeous leaves.
Vaguely we understand that the whole world is a"oat, and last of all,
we include these leaves in the register of returning birds.
The falling of cranes' feathers
balances the vast universe.
The errors of my mischievous youth
sweep away the mornings of golden autumn.
1984
(!(
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
!!!
The sad red days of august bring to the countryside an autumn chill.
The wind flapping at the tent wears me down,
follow the birds southwards.
have travelled through many autumns on the steppe,
and there are white flecks in my jet black hair.
remain in the cloaks of birds heading into distance,
carrying along my gentle childhood.
The sweet grey days of the wormwood steppe absorb
the melodies of the returning birds.
The mild days of coming spring change the steppe's tuneful song to wild iris.
The grasses wave their heads through the reddening days,
and the birdsong sighs the long autumn..
The descendants of a thousand years of cranes leave,
and the kindly swans are weeping beneath the skies..
Eighty years ago was a lithe-necked crane,
it seemed flew my long life across the steep skies!
The whistling of the poplar grove disturbed my ancestral land,
it seemed saw this sad autumn a thousand years hence.
The yellowing autumn tires the red hills.
The song of birds relaxes the saddened heart.
The earth is all the dreams that pass us by,
and life is truth and lies combined..
1984
(!*
!!!
Autumn, with its thin blue clothes, visits the water of the river.
The birds fly, their wings flapping every leaf's descent.
As the waves of autumn lap at the distant silence of the far bank,
'll call to mind my dear and gentle son.
The autumn is a little tiring,
and the mountains are gloomy and voiceless.
n the story-like stillness,
the silence is absorbed into the dawn..
The sad leaves flutter slightly,
and the cold grasses of roseate autumn harden.
The gilded vegetation of autumn turn to blue,
and chat a little as they travel.
A single red leaf ornaments the water,
it floats upon the surface like a tiny boat.
The leaf floating in the swell bears my life,
further and further it carries it, slowly and slowly!
Autumn has come to my life, it blows cool,
and the autumn joins with the string of the years and me..
And truly, if look out from the mountains,
there's but a single leaf, fluttering..
(!!
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
!!!
A little stream murmurs in the borderless world.
My dear wife ladles the water and fills up the pitcher.
The silken sands hum underfoot as though whistling with the river water.
And stand, motionless, seeing that in the jug of water the sky is full.
The sun creeps beyond the distant mountains, its last rays running out,
and my love ladles water, wets her hair,
the droplets rainbow into air, a line of cranes,
come together in distance,
are heading away in joy
towards the sky's edge,
pursuing the sunrays.
Oh, the invisible flow of time is conveyed through my body and my mind,
and know my mind is following the birds, who melt into air.
A lovely autumn evening, and am watching my wife at the river's edge,
my beautiful love, clear against the screen of sky.
Within this melancholy life, within the waves of sand and water and time,
this tenderness, this living physical warmth, is unrepeatable,
and, as the days file onwards,
grow used to this earthly life.
sit upon the riverbank, like a child absorbed in a fascinating game.
A little stream murmurs in the borderless world.
My dear wife takes water in her cupped hands and wets her pigtails.
At that very moment it is twilight,
the river and the stones are absorbed into the sand.
An ancient quality is come to my poem.
t was maybe here a thousand million years ago.
1979-1982
(!"
!!!
A gentle woman is like a willow tree on a riverbank.
She ever holds the mind,
like a wild ass in the haze of an autumn morning!
And now this fair harmony is as the flashing eye,
joyful in the swan's wings.
t is early evening, but my mind spreads to my feet and am complete!
A woman is no man, she is a song kept back by heaven!
A secret form, a mingling of melody and early light!
Does a man split from the world in birth, in order to sense himself?
Together, our two bodies are an unchanging frequency,
years in the grip of the living earth,
from a private relationship
with eternal time,
like wheels rolling beneath a cart!
But that we humans should revolve the hoop of the eternal world..
Alive, we are an eternal part, absorbed into the blue sky!
And we call our not being there our not experiencing the body.
am absorbed into this woman,
as if dissolving into a barren, ancient mist.
By continuing myself in this living world, create others.
am forever on the circling lineage of creatures!
And, should fall away, not one person,
not one village will be lost to the world.
1979-1982
(!#
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
!!!
A thousand thousand years of labor
has made of you the nature of mother.
An eternal engine, endlessly working
to create an amazing and wondrous body.
The dark blue sky carried rain in the womb of the clouds,
and forever the dark blue wind of Khurmast has lacked you.
The stars beat out into the infinity of the universe,
and think you back into the wanton earth.
n soft sadness the grasses have plaited their green.
We two meet together, a slanting starlight piercing the clouds.
A watery milkiness in the river brings forth dense rings,
a magic absorbed into the liver of the world.
n boundless space which has neither desire nor eye,
my love, my superior craft, has created time.
Like light and melody, unmade by human hand,
how wonderful to find a body in the timeless breadth.
am standing outside in the silent night,
and suddenly know you are come to me from the distant stars,
your dear body is not human.
A shard of time discovered in my self you!
A piece of life in the space of the broad earth you!
Ulaanbaatar-Baruun Urt 1982
(!$
!!!
My sweet love was waiting for me,
living slowly in this world, unborn.
n endless space we "oated and,
searching and searching, we discovered one another.
We were not too early, we are not too late,
joined together on this earth, in this ring of fortune.
And had fortune's star gone just slightly awry,
my loving thoughts would have been specks of dust.
Slowly searched for you, made friends with the dark stars,
they had the skygirl's precious beauty!
Their lights, their storms,
their time dreadfully hid you from me, my darling!
The wind and the oceans searched with me for you,
for millions and millions of years,
until we reached this world!
was happy to receive you from the !ne earth,
and rushed to have you fashioned in the cosmos!
The universe will make of you, brought back from the earth,
a single dear body, until we come together in the world.
Before we make our endless path, my love,
without beginning, the world will meld you with me!
23 x 82
(!%
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
!!!
sit every evening on the hilltop,
and, in my absence, get drunk on moonrays.
lie amid the whistling of uncountable grasses
and know the raininess of clouds for a million years.
So many dark stars glisten their warnings upon the cold pallor of my forehead!
They will remain for a century, perhaps,
sorrowing for a thousand little secrets.
Amid the grasses of an autumn night, breathing,
the sky overhead protects me.
The stars sing out their fortune,
birds in flight, my homeland!
A single feather fallen from bright wings,
a star in my poem or in my heart!
A single lamina fallen from the shining stars,
a willow growing in my senses, in my mind!
So sit every evening on the hilltop,
hearing only the melody of the stars..
Many years in this body of mine, wasting away,
and now the stars listen to the beating of my heart.
1982
(!&
!!!
Like leaves, the years do not all exist in their passing.
The narrow path we walk along in the starlight,
the rocky land of the snow mountains,
the bright world is untraced by
the melancholy breeze of an autumn evening.
f you compare it with our short lives, it is like eternity,
and truly, this peace-loving mountain will dissolve into endless time.
The streams and hills which erased my father's father's time do not exist.
From the depths of past aeons other streams and other dunes appear.
n the quiet of evening, we kiss beneath an elegant birch tree's branches,
its leaves pressing my ancestors into line in the shadows.
But one moment is cut through with the sword of time and falls to earth,
its whiteness is taken in and silently absorbed.
My ancestors do not exist, nor do my contemporaries exist.
My dreams are as though set among the springs beneath an orphaned pine.
Where do not exist the people and objects
and days upon the eternal earth?
They wander with all things through the waves of passing time.
The changeable white clouds are formless, but they make the rain fall.
But, through the power of fate, the world arises from my human body.
Just as one returns from a distant journey
and stands in wonder at the door, so am amazed that ,
nobody, do not know how to enter.
And, just as they say how something waits for
me beyond the door of the world,
so my faith shines brighter than a star glittering
in the darkness of night.
But, for this reason, take pleasure in the watery whisper of the stream,
and dare not say that the woman whom
lead by the hand is ordinary.
This woman and have no existence in the world,
but, since this feeble world is not without existence,
where can we not go together?
(!'
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
sink into my children alone, my line remains, know no other thing,
but shall not still be walking,
under the incomparable blue of Heaven,
after a thousand years?
(")
!!!
bury in my heart and my mind all the fine people,
and , in my life of waking domesticity,
preserve their images with love.
erect gravestones for them with all types of poetry,
and, as a memorial, carve out verses of melody!
offer respect in my mind and heart to our ancestors.
Here alone do they spend the time in peaceful sleep.
Protecting their eternal rest from rain and snow and wind and storms,
bearing them in my thoughts return across the earth..
call to the many people who dwell within the meadows of my mind,
And the white feathers of the birds of time past
and time to come fall in my hair.
My hair is far from greying, though every fleck
erects a memorial in poetry,
the children of sleepness nights.
My thoughts are indebted to all who have gone from this earth.
suffer over time, search the tracks of harmony..
f, in a single verse, can absorb their warm breath,
can certainly be happy that a memorial is already erected..
1983
("(
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
I -THE BODY OF THE COSMOS
- the body of the cosmos!
Like the stars over there,
like the wandering clouds,
like the broad sun,
the superior creation
of a world which cannot in the least be thought!
Planet earth in myself,
the physical accumulation of time passed by.
Time, which fashioned me with its small, secret hands
fashioned over aeons stars, the moon, the world, and people!
have neither beginning nor end,
my creation and destruction are boundless!
Like giant stars colliding, exploding in the vastness of a billion years.
My mother and my father created my body unexpectedly!
the body of the cosmos!
Since the vegetation, and wind and storms have life,
they are part of the wide world!
Fire and water chase after me.
My relatives the empty sunshine, air and iron and soil!
Light and air create me silently in the unbound vastness,
the eternal engine takes over my seeing eyes,
my moving body, my life.
Even my parents are prepared, and arrange my birthing,
the endless space of the world becomes my belly,
the winds and storms settle me with their kisses,
in the great majesty of the cosmos,
the sorrowful islands of stars secretly protect me,
everything joins with my body in the balance of the world,
("*
takes part in my being, right down to the lark.
n majestic darkness,
a gentle song creates me in the celebration of the world!
Around all the stars,
a thousand thousand suns have died creating me.
They pass and pass by without end,
driven on the waves of eternal time,
they flow and flow unbroken on,
leading men and beasts in their unbreaking fortune,
they stretch and stretch out, endless,
in the inexhaustible space of thoughts,
a joining of flowers, fish, birds, horses and seas,
all participating in the eternal engine of cosmic creation.
am the ancient companion to the sun, the moon and the planets!
am the body of the sky,
kept to myself for hundreds and millions of aeons!
shout across the world, reach out my hand to the stars,
smash the nine planets, break even the borders of galaxies,
taste everything of the outer world, all that makes me,
burn myself on the sun and on wings of thought,
and a divine body comes into being,
from the bright light and the great heat
and the flames of a million years!
My body without extinction, without end, without beginning,
the magic of that which is and that which is not,
forge myself in the world unbound..
1983
("!
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
I LIVE BY COSMIC LAWS
am living by cosmic laws.
By force of will, was born to the reprobate earth,
but was birthed in truth by a star.
am contained by the whole earth.
My life on earth is limited.
When the cord was cut, my breathing had rhythm.
Between the start and the finish,
how far look behind, and stare ahead, is limited.
live in the breath of the world.
My heart pounds out the beating of the stars,
my veins pulse with the whispering of water,
and the fire's warmth blazes in my life.
am granted destiny beneath the moon.
My breathing, thinking, walking on the earth
is limited exactly by the distant stars.
hold my lover on a cold autumn night,
listening to the grass on the silent wild steppe.
And lips touching softly, and holding hands,
remain upon the screen of the wide world.
The woman asleep in my lap,
there is no-one else knows this sweet moment.
This, my predestined fondness,
in the logbook of a hundred million years upon the earth.
We have both suffered under cosmic laws.
My body has ridden a multitude to get here.
(""
The wind, storms, the wild steppe, stars by day, autumn knolls -
all that is in the round earth justifies me.
My prayers have made me man, not monkey!
Oh, lying down, sigh, sigh oh my own powerlessness.
Up into the darkness stare, and there is reconciliation!
A flame at night calms the whistling of the universe.
A woman holds you through nine months of gentle evenings.
n the boundless cosmos, turn with the earth's sphere,
in the myriad assembly of stars, travel on, honoring the human form!
1983
("#
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
THE POET
for Ravjaa
He was a man of the turning world.
There was not one river, but it was all ocean.
There were no areas under Heaven,
but flowing rivers and country and islands in his sway.
For him there was no one person, nor a group of people,
And all creatures dwelling under Heaven loved him.
This love was boundless in all directions,
and even where the stars roamed was too small.
At one time, he was living with the great Pushkin.
Their bodies were separate, their worlds extended,
yet they breathed as one, their minds were striving,
they were free.
Not once did he meet with Pushkin, never heard his name,
nor did Pushkin know about this poet Ravjaa!
But they dwelt in two places and at one time in the world,
with one pair of eyes they watched the sun
and the moon light the world!
Creatures and the desert were within them,
a loving mind, and even books, were within them,
and, best of all, they were men, and,
better than that, they were free.
The Noyon Khutagt of the Gobi came to the region of the stars.
He was like the Buddha and the waters
and the beautiful women befriended him.
He was far away from all the world's wickedness,
and, with his mind, he left the cosmic wheel
and joined with freedom.
Now Ravjaa is dwelling in the eternal world of serenity.
Now Ravjaa has closed the door on weakness.
This is a sign of not appeasing the rule of evil in our chill existence.
Ravjaa could think, had the power to flee existence!
("$
This holy man knew how the vast world deceives,
he befriended alcohol, and women, and the brawling mind!
His very nature opposed all violence everywhere,
he stood above the rulers and the Bogd Khan.
He challenged any buddha who scrimped on freedom.
Ravjaa's every atom strove to grasp the measure of a buddha.
He honored the freedom of body and mind above a buddha.
Ravjaa - the great man of letters!
1984
("%
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
You, my Animaa, have stolen away my peace,
am tormented by sleeplessness through the still nights.
When am half awake, you are there on my pillow,
As though the full moon has come down through the skylight.
would meet upon our palms, be joined in our minds,
when you smile, it is lovely, a rush of pearls.
envy the wind's fine touch,
and your sweet lips are lovely, a juncture of petals.
The shining sun does not illuminate you, nor you the sun.
You stand at the door of the ger, shading your eyes as you watch the sky,
and the distant mountains come closer
and reveal your beauty.
You step out lightly like the river's flow.
Mother Nature has granted to one body all that is beautiful,
with all her power she has revealed her image.
From all that is wonderful in earth and sky she created a woman,
and, speaking of that which is matchless,
she summoned the poet.
When at morning the stag and hind drink from the spring waters,
the dew coloring the meadow cools their bare legs.
They walk unhurried in the grass, they approach you,
perhaps mistaking the silent laborer for a visitor from another
planet.
An innocent visitor from far away imagines the world
through the old Mongolian images fashioned by Zanabazar.
You take the fragile hand of a five month old child,
who leads you, so delicate, to meet a visitor from the stars.
("&
This is how sleep flees from me through the still nights,
and think about you in the rays of the distant moon.
The stag and hind return down the mountain, ashine with silverdust,
and gallop down the seam of the broad sky,
splintering the stars.
Ordinary beauty is useless to the world.
This earth is formed from an exceptional beauty.
Since everyone who comes to life is loved, there is no other paradise!
On this lonely earth, a woman spends the nights in my mind.
And she is you!
("'
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
OTHER TIMES, OTHER SITUATIONS
go visiting, as did before, other times and other situations.
And other poets love other lovers, no less than do today.
Modestly, my children visit other planets and other worlds.
The time tames them, in their other clothes and other fantasies.
Another walks against the storm, in this place where stop.
Another poet sings for himself, of the world which have praised.
Today, our discussions are detailed, we conceive of many things.
And things we do not notice occupy our minds.
Other flowers bloom in spring, other grasses wither in autumn,
other birds fly at other times,
and other young men gaze with other eyes.
Many autumns of changing forms, the passage of time in the world.
The grasses repeat their green forms,
rippling, swaying as they do today.
Other clouds move in other times,
and other elders teach other children.
And, though they live in other times and other places,
from today self will not repeat them.
go visiting, as did before, other times and other situations.
And other poets love other lovers, no less than do today.
1983
(#)
ALL THINGS ARE FULFILLED IN TIME
Everywhere, all things are ful!lled,
powerfully, on this golden earth!
Today's rain falls only today, and
tomorrow, other rains will come down..
Today am in love with this girl.
Tomorrow she will be more beautiful.
This night will not return to us, and shall kiss her, modestly.
The late "owers do not grow in the winter, nor will the days return.
Everything which happens this very day upports me with its poetry.
t touches the young man's !ne mind,
he is handsome beneath the moon.
But you, my dear girl,
will be an old woman, leaning on a stick.
But only now, feel this wondrous beauty,
Only now, love this bright form.
Unforsaken in the mists of days to come,
stand amid today's broad gleam.
Everywhere, all things are ful!lled, powerfully, on this golden earth!
And old men with grey beards have stormed also through time!
Today, life is a story, and other young men have held the !eld.
At !rst, their chance is gone, while, later, they are replaced..
We don't scold them for building monasteries.
Our time is always coming.
But, if there was no old woman yesterday,
could love this young girl today?
1983
(#(
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
from THE CELESTIAL CITY
"An open smile"
O D
1
You hurled snow against my bright window,
but you didn't wake me from my dozy thoughts!
close my eyes, bend over the white snow,
my brown hair breaks across my shoulder,
disturbs the lamplight.
. knock gently at the door, and you are smiling in front of me,
showing your beauty like a picture.
hold you in my hands, and the candle's flame scorches my veins.
read a poem, my voice shaking, my mind is calmed by your open smile.
You ask me.? Life gone by.Onelka.
How did the shadow of sadness strike the eye?
Soundless.life.every evening.a window..
Soon we two will be swimming in twilight, held in a sad silence.
My heart beating. imagine my distant homeland, my wife.
My mind, a teeming storm of sadnes.a poem glints in the dark room.
Pure.chill.beautiful, like a cold, clear glass..
A balance of wisdom and beauty?...unrivalled loveliness.cold,
white.flashing eyes!
A heat at my very heart warms even the water in a stream.
2
The blue rays of the magical snow which penetrates the window
sink slowly into my melancholy body.
And even my melodic poetry has cold breath.
.running like sled tracks,
(#*
reach towards the edges of the sky,
lines of thought deep in the night.
and wander back.
What is there to limit existence.life.thoughts?
am led into my pure and bright soul.
3
Two stars, meeting in the boundless, pale light.
noticed a shooting milky light, an ancient time. was a child.
My bright eyes were clear by night,
rode the mind's horse in the far skies!
Where was the mirage, glistening in the wide mists of memory?
My love is wandering there.
4
Destiny is plaited itching solitary lines.
Natasha, my daughter-in-law, dressed in birchwhite, her fragrant scent..
How, in this most ancient moon's art,
am to embrace you on the Kulikov plain?
Watching my dear one in the mirror of the years,the evenings of Moscow
snows and the movements of stars,
from the world we two received a hand's breadth of land!
.a single moment flashing in thousand years,
like a coin dropped in the ocean,
or a pearl lost among last year's grass.
Did it happen secretly? When? Where? Who knows.?
5
s a sad form an hallucination?
s a beautiful body an image?
Someone's shadow strikes the soft leaves of a wild rose,
only the color's slight fade proves distressing.
A winter storm travels through the flowers,
and, when summer scents the sedge meadow,
the rose smiles from among the grasses.
(#!
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
6
Oh, the Buddha has sent me new melancholy.
A distant camel caravan speeds through the days..
While have not awakened from my sweet dream,
my golden memories have gone from me.
Dozing, passed by the white paradise, five years of Monscow's sheen,
and, when set off for Mongolia, abandoning my child,
my first mistake, into a man's hand,
my mind was shamed maybe,
like a daughter-in-law returning to her parents.
Moscow 8 xi 79
(#"
ELBRUS
Mighty Elibrus towers beneath the sky, as though it has had its fill of
fame.
Peaceful quite silent it hears no gossip
like great scholars, who have struggled with the truth,
its two greywhite heads shine in the unattained heights.
They both kiss the crown, the small mountains remain below.
The small ones shift about as though hiding their envy,
and Elibrus shines beside the golden sun alone.
No equal is known in the great divine world,
as befitting such a great champion,
he fails to notice the wind, storms or even the lightning!
Time wears everything in the world away,
but on sacred Elibrus it wears itself away.
Although the years flow along the river in tens of thousands,
it is so immense that they grow unclear without it noticing!
t is not surprised by either praise or blame,
Elbrus, belovud of great and unrivalled scholars,
t is expressive, like a steed dashing towards the sky,
never piercing Heaven with an invincible great power.
t flourished its white peak down towards its lower slopes,
Teaching them to be firm, as it was when times were hard!
ts white peak, as an unsullied mind, inspires trust,
and on difficult days, it defends the precious and the pure!
Many other mountains have been taken from invincible Elbrus,
and Elbrus has ripped their flesh and bones and digested them!
People quarrel and storm down upon the lower slopes,
they praise each other, they bury someone, a new life is born.
And, while we see various things in the sphere of being and absence,
as we watch white Elbrus, our sins are purified,
and we are struck by divine thoughts, remembered in our words!
Elbrus is the tough and powerful chief of Kavkaz,
the divine mountain of the whole world!
The children of Khalkha come before you to remember Khangai
(##
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
and Khentii, thinking that these mountains, your relations, are far away.
feel that all the mountains of the world are within your sphere,
from the boundlessness of earth out to the nine planets.
remove my hat and kneel before you,
oh, and all your relatives.
18 xi 83
(#$
!!!
am walking in the palace of my mother tongue,
in a work of delicacy, my understanding awakens.
n the palace, hewn from regular granite,
would hide away from the midday heat.
n the citadel, created from green emerald,
would take pleasure, relaxing with my friends.
The majestic memorials and fine cities of ancient Rome,
the watery wonder which is Paris today,
the splendid monasteries of ndia -
feel deeply that my mother tongue lacks nothing of all this.
Young men wander in the open spaces of their mother tongues,
combing the vast seas for the small fry of knowledge.
Towards the universal palace, striving upwards,
the scholars ride, they speak the future and the past.
Apples are growing in the garden of my mother tongue,
an eternal, green paradise through the turning seasons.
The many kinds of songbirds here are precious,
the secret power, eternally within me my mother tongue!
24 viii 84
(#%
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
HOMELAND
The horse snorts, the stirrups clash,
even in my dreams, see no peaceful destiny.
When morning breaks in my distant homeland,
there is no blue smoke rising from the ger.
For how long will we see
the tent flapping in the wild winds?
We read books, for a time oblivious,
at every moment we seem like lambs at play.
A gushing spring whispers on my pillow.
A young woman in a green summer robe appears to come and go..
Too far away, I would embrace her.
How can now forget
these many, many mountains, rows of blue?
As though a magic child of the steppes, saying I would go,
had come before me from this place so far away.
feel the lack of the sunwarmed speckled stones,
keep thinking of the mother who raised me.
Yellow flowers dance in the country winds,
and stags and hinds call in the blue mists.
The horse snorts, the stirrups clash,
even in my dreams, see no peaceful destiny.
When morning breaks in my distant homeland,
there is no blue smoke rising from the ger.
1982
(#&
ON THE SALTPLAINS
1
To move away from the noise of the entire world,
to forget both curses and prayers,
to step barefoot on the banks of the river, its source,
to recall my childhood from the stones,
, the vagrant child, have gone astray
and am returned to the county town.
The sad rains of autumn unceasingly teem down,
and my ancestors' homeland glints in the melancholy mists.
The mountains are drenched, but the cold hills shelter in the warm,
and the cranes, singing beyond the clouds,
touch the strings of my soft heart.
The stones are wet in the day's mists, my dear heart is soaked,
the scent of the grey steppes is strangely pungent.
As came back along paths of earth, my hat in my hand,
missed my grandmother, standing upon her homeland, on unprepared soil.
My dear grandmother appears from the rain of white mushrooms,
as though singing back my earliest memories
as she gathers the scree.
meet, in the hall of memory, with all who have come from the saltplains,
we're chatting, and merrily drenched in the sad rains of autumn.
2
Naranbulag, the sunspring, gurgles from the bottom of the ravine.
The soaked stones are cold upon their lips,
and the tears drop from their eyes.
The elders kneel as though embracing my homeland..
My father waters the horses, slowly they quench their thirst,
as if kissing the spring waters.
My mother, a woman of Mongolia,
draws spring water and takes the road home with melody.
The children herd the calves and play upon the lawns,
stones held in the mind, lean hands holding flowers,
(#'
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
they come running their legs away,
The golden spring of magic stories is Naranbulag,
with its happy rays of sun, my motherland's eternal medicine,
a magic secret, adding power at every sip!
I am happy on this earth, thought, mistakenly,
I shall come back later, promised, and spend the night.
My Naranbulag, part of an unbroken paradise,
a sweet harmony, gushing from the mother's earthly breasts..
And, my motherland, who grants a delightful poetry, bow down to you!
3
Too late, the moon comes out and vanishes again.
The sound of feet is heard nearby, a woman returning with water.
The shadow of a young man passes by in the darkness.
Stars race towards the water in the pail, swimming like small fishes.
n the dusk, the earth is like a swaying ship.
The hand carrying the pail of water is warm when grasped.
n the hand of the woman, who greets me shyly,
like one from another planet, my destiny is held now,
as though it were a flower.
($)
!!!
t has been returning for five thousand years,
grain swaying against my shins just like before,
clouds turning blue in the far distance,
the whinnying of a sharga,
its mane flashing in the fire,
the world beautiful in a flow of tears,
its downcast eyes gleaming, and, like a girl's smile,
the light of the warm sun disturbs the heart.
t chases after the waves of the green sea,
scatters small mountains across the azure sky.
A column of cranes come in from behind,
a lingering breeze dances on the hilltop.
The rivers chill their melodies in girls' voices,
and a small child in short orange trousers runs back and forth.
My mother is not in the skyblue pasture,
the lowing cows with twisted horns,
have five thousand younger brothers a woman chatting away,
she offers a pink milk.
Not a moment's break, not a second's respite,
a skyblue eternity of waves billows forth,
upon which the dear girls and the gentle boys float along.
At every moment, a secret recollection penetrates my heart,
exacerbates my everlasting grief.
pass by among the shadows,
watching the beautiful legs of unknown children.
My Bor is not there, relaxing, at ease, and tears come to me,
in my hand hold a broken branch,
would weep for the trampled flowers.
bring back mother earth, who alone misses family and friends and,
five thousand years hence, would have the clouds moved,
and my descendants become buddhas!
The lineage of Mongolia, with its jet black hair,
lays a hand on the crown of a cradled child,
($(
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
and misses its Gangabaatar
among the freshfaced newborns.
would read verses of quartz, sucking them from a peaceful heart,
would follow shining fresh tracks through the hearts of girls!
Five thousand brothers are quarreling with
a great poet in the starship's cabin.
There's a couple, talking, getting married in the clarity of sky,
they feel melancholy in the melody of rainbow light,
they feel thrilled by the thunder's silvery tune and,
enjoying every moment of joy,
they miss their sadness a little.
The swallows watch as they return to their previous ways,
the young man plucks at the strings,
and, oh, would that it were five hundred years from now!
join with peace everywhere, watch with weak eyes
the beginning of the stars' wedding,
pray to the man in the hat and deel,
turn the pages of this strange book of seven thousand years,
excitedly, sense every color, hold every melody.
step among the rocks and flowers of my living homeland,
this body of mine must weaken,
imagine myself touching the entire earth,
gathering all the stones.
crawl on the ground, high on the smell of wild leek,
miss my Handaa, whispering with the winds on the steppe,
enjoy how the rocks threw for my dog in my childhood are become earth,
and would faint to touch my lips to the cold earth!
wake up, kiss the earth on which my father stepped,
fumble and cannot find even the hand's breadth path,
and, in the cold glimmering of the stars,
lie upon the earth,
sense the thundering hooves of five thousand years of horses,
counting every murmur of blood coursing in my Naranbulag,
seeping out by night to lullaby me, to lullaby me.
'm dozing, wading through the deep grasses of night,
and gold and silver bells are ringing in my heart.
Among the grasses, am hearing the whisper of my love,
exactly five thousand years before.
($*
spread my wings of ancient night and,
As the song's melody grows, the light of dawn slowly spreads.
The white lark sings upon the hills,
tending the graves of all my ancestors, overhead,
the rays of fire hiss and the sun rises as a gorgeous lover.
Over here, a man gallops on a white horse,
reveals a family like mine, as though in a picture.
Now, after a thousand thousand years are passed, am enjoying
all which has taken form over centuries and centuries.
May live, even live with my longing
for a wonderful future, free of money,
policemen and jealousy!
love my misery, am beside myself with joy,
have my basic destiny,
will praise to the sun my family and my descendants, say.
And, as every drop flows through the world's skyblue distance,
may find my heart's desire, and be born a human!
Moscow 20 x 79
($!
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
AI-NAN-AI!
n the Milky Way, on the path of the temporal world,
the stars of hope meet me, glimmering in my hand, Ai-nan-ai!
wonder that so lovely a body is granted, not to a person,
but to the Buddha, and near to it make my prayer, Ai-nan-ai!
Do poetry and love sink into my unclear mind?
Your female body shines Buddha-like,
a candle in the darkness, Ai-nan-ai!
t is as though you have suddenly appeared upon the path of my life.
The fathom of your body, the light inside my heart,
does it change, Ai-nan-ai?
After two thousand years with our descendants, physicists, astrologers,
our minds' guides,
have not gained the wisdom expected, Ai-nan-ai!
But after a million years with them, am on their level:
my feelings are waiting for a loving mind
and beauty, Ai-nan-ai!
Without losing this eternal beauty, an unrepeatable sign of loveliness
brings me from sadness,
and in my head speak even with the gods!
Your beauty is a true and deathless symbol, Ai-nan-ai!
You gently took me out through the door of Heaven, there was no shock,
and, should commingle with your body,
woman of pure conduct,
shall join with the waters, the stars and planets,
the sun's melody of the vast world.
My love is an eternal symbol, or the offspring of fine thoughts, Ai-nan-ai!
Your inescapable beauty is the start of divinity or the meaning of life!
1979-1982
($"
I AM SLOWLY LIVING IN THE PERFECT WORLD
an essay-picture
1 MOUNTANS
The power of the mountains slowly appears to me, as though, with the
passing of every year, my tender heart is joined with the mountains.
Oh, and the dazzling blue mountains are desirous of one another, two
hurrying to be as one, as though upon the !rst night of marriage.
The power of the mountains slowly appears to me, and am absorbed
into their fresh clarity, their pure and precious immobility.
Thought deserts me, the melody of the beautiful blue mountains drops
down, the rain teems through the moonlight, and the "ow of the water in the
stream takes control of my mind.
As the song of my belovud, warm mountains pale into the white glow, and
am happy. n the rays of the round moon, the sky and the mountains are
as one, it is as though the mountains appear from the sky, as though the
sky is the completion of the mountains..
The mountains, which pay no heed to the eyes of time, experience the
silent world. The peaceful nature of the ever voiceless mountains appears
as if hidden in the depth of the blue sky. As if the soul of the vast and
matchless sky appeared in the skyblue euphony of the mountains.
My home is rich in mountains, the mountains are rich in jewels. am used
to standing close to these thousand mountains of the sunshone earth.
These mountains have been traveling like nomads for a thousand years.
Shaking the dust of a thousand years, these mountains are like horses,
they are the symbols of eternal life and purity.
imagine Shiliin Bogd, whose crown of the sun looms over the frontier
of my country, and Golden Hill, where spent my childhood, both far away
in the distance, and coming towards me, whinnying like the horses in my
dreams.
knew that the beautiful mountains were the joy of my dreams at night,
like being with a beautiful lover. n this world, there are no bad mountains.
Mountains are an example of the loveliness of this world. knew that, upon
a thoroughbred horse, as it whinnied at the beautiful mountains, visited
the meadow of dreams, and raised the pennant, splashing in the soft rain
of memory. And so, during my life, gave my heart to the mountains and the
($#
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
mountains' peaceful nature was revealed to me. And my mind is given over
to poetry as though to the horse of the travelling mountains!
Like carts, beginning to move onwards,
the mountains travel through mirages.
Some of them we see come to a stop,
as though their loads are too heavy.
The mountains come travelling,
reaching to our wise ancestors.
The mountains move onwards, our cloth tents
following one another like carts.
From ancient times up until now,
our elders have been travelling.
Our elders ride upon the mountains,
stringing the days together.
Along the flow of land's unreal time,
the ancestors walk with the earth's song.
The skyblue mountains at the edges of the sky
travel along, their loads evenly balanced.
2 HLLS
At evening time, the sky casts moonrays upon the hills. The melody of the
planets and the stars resound from the hills, and the hills receive shelter
as from ancient dear friends. At one time these little hills had imagined
themselves mountains. The hills developed like children, the hills grew in
number like children and, noticing how it was in the white light of evening,
their desires and the meaning of their life were clari!ed. These hills, the
grandchildren of mountains older than the sky, made friends with the
vegetation and with the wind, they fell in love with the stars. One autumn
evening, cold among the brown hills, a young fawn brought this little song to
my mind. This little creature came seeking, its frightened eyes showing its
innocence, and it drew away, The hill and the little deer seemed like twins.
Twenty years before, the world had been clear to my eyes and it was as
though my grandmother was whispering the story on the peak of the hill.
($$
We were all six of us the hill, the vegetation, the fawn, grandmother, the
wind and me become an image and, in the moonlight, the hills came to
life, rumbling away, like so many white camel calves.
The image and the truth were milky now and vague, and thought became
focussed to a point overhead. n my head, the stars were dancing back and
forth, was not present there, and it was as though the in!nite land, skies,
stars and hills were united within me. Slowly the image died away into the
autumn sky, and shuddered with cold. came back from the paradise of
childhood, was rather fearful, quickly wished to write the song of the hills.
The hills held the mind which loves its homeland. On the hills lit up by the
white moonlight, followed the ways of the world and was absorbed into the
in!nity of every world, resonating with the melody of the planets and stars.
And wrote this poem:
STANDNG ON A WNDY HLL ONE AUTUMN EVENNG
n ultimate slowness, these berrybrown hills have floated through time.
Faded grasses are sheltering this autumn evening from the bitter wind..
Like my brothers, these hills are used to the world to which they are come,
like berrybrown birds,
they feel the sanctuary of many, many mountains..
The bluegrey smoke of the gers spreads out over the hills.
The bluegrey stars shine in the hollows through the night.
Like grains of sand, the pale earth pours through my fingers.
And time will make my mind pure, like golden sand.
lie amid the autumn grass and talk with the hills.
Under the silent skies, the nature of the eternally unspoken draws close.
nod at what is said of bittersweet, of grasping what is too great, and
feel the nature of the tiniest knolls through the hills upon the wild steppe.
We come to recognise one another, we start through vision to talk and,
like two lovers, and the hills become as one..
The hills are feeling the bitter cold this autumn evening, they seek shelter.
love my mother Nature, who has made these moving hills for me.
The wisdom which completes the incomplete takes form among the hills,
and tears fall into my palm like drops of rain.
($%
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
This autumn evening, the camels bellow and the withered grass is sad,
and in the sanctuary of the hills
seek refuge from the piercing wind.
My mind feels sad for me upon this living earth.
hear an orphaned camel calf, bellowing through the years.
This autumn evening, sit upon the hill like my grandfather, my legs
crossed, and tell the rosary of my life through the melody of my thoughts.
3 LAKES
The beauty of Lake Ganga by night is ravishing, like a woman. The lovely
river is like a !ne lover, it holds thought, it gives pleasure to the mind. The
stars shine in the waters of the lake as though in the sky and the expression
of their beautiful bodies was the sound of poetry, as wondrous as the girls
of my homeland.
At night, amidst the breathing of my Ganga and the whispers of the young
couple beneath the red willows on its bank, in this world of dreams take
my hat and walk away. The Ganga is really one of the beautiful waters of
the world.
n a letter written to his children, my father said, his mind bestirred as
he watched from afar the pearlescent blue ocean, "The ocean seems here
to have the beauty of the sky. My father brought restraint to his mind, he
was barely present and, in the beauty of this great body of water, his own
weakness was affected. My Ganga seems in this landscape to be like the
gentle song of the sky. Beneath the night sky, this homeland, the horses
whinnying along the shores, the silken sands come to life, and a single star
glistens.
My Ganga and the stars come together, vast waters of melody! n the
land around this lake, minds and hearts are puri!ed, and thoughts clari!ed,
united in joy. And it is impossible to think that the people who spend the
night upon the land around so lovely a lake might be capable of doing evil.
"Mirroring the nature of the cliffs,
The Ganga is broad and wide.
t is as though the stars, diving into the waters, "ashing through the
darkness of the night, are in repose above the encampments on the shores
of this great body of water.
($&
f you bathe in the great waters of the pure Ganga, you discover magic
and the warm winds whispers as though saying we are quite happy in this
world. take off my clothes and dive into the warm waters of the Ganga,
and these vast waters embrace me like my dear life. The stars do not
"ee from me and there "oat and forget my weariness. Flashing amid the
waves of the moonlight palace of the lake, my Lake Ganga has been my
cradle for thousands of years.
offer myself to the waters of the Ganga by night,
a poet, captured in the gleaming colors of the waves.
My body, joined with the Ganga, glimmering imperceptibly,
cannot feel my arms, my neck, my waist..
My naked body, joined with the Ganga my mother,
inhabiting the natural world, away from virtue and wickedness.
The moon's weak rays play upon the surface of the water,
and the stars which dance in the moonlit night float after me.
float along the Ganga, happy like the fishes,
do not think about these moments of greeting and farewell.
am of the water, think of my birth from water droplets..
perhaps this was my world, calm and boundless..
The waters flow through everything and, upon Lake Ganga,
even the moonrays are sounded in a lovely melody.
n these lakewaters am cut off from the world,
and feel myself returning once again to my mother's womb.
4 LOVE
Thinking about how an Armenian poet was speaking with admiration
about his customs, discovered hiding amidst those pure symbols a very
great idea. What discovered was that, in Armenia, if a mother kisses the
hand of a poet, her children will be good people. And one reason for this is
that the hand which was kissed will never carry out an evil deed.
Might the hand touched by the lips of the precious and pure mother
produce a bad poem? have grasped deeply the reason as to why mothers
($'
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
kiss the hands of the poets in the beautiful land of Armenia. A young man
said to me that the girl he loved was "my open land.
The young man was seventeen, there was a !re burning in his eyes, he
said everything that is beautiful comes from you, my love.
There are many, many towns and villages in this world, and
there are many, many planets and stars in this world.
cannot go to all of these places, but my belovud girl stands in their
place. At evening time, with what euphony, with what beauty do sing these
melodies? Every reason exists in love. f we can think that everything that
is of the world, everything that is of humanity, is dissolved into a single
person, can there be no virtue? Having found this girl upon the earth, was
happy. This is the truth. became friendly with a woman and so did many
things to which previously had been unaccustomed.
The window opens upon the gleaming school building, the particular
beauty of the Shargin Uuls, the quiet paved streets, lovely all the way up
to Lhagvaa and knew that, since loved that woman, greatly loved the
world and the people and the "owers and the animals. At that time, wrote
a poem, " have begun to love the world more than my belovud, looked
upon the earth with eyes of remembrance and my thoughts were drunk on
happiness.
People tell me that have loved over and over again. t seemed that
was reborn every time loved, and whenever loved was happy. When
was in love never thought about anyone but myself. They were happy for
that. And, they being happy, felt that was happy.
My friends have made me realise that, were to stop loving, there
would be nothing of me in the world!
When was small, marvelled at the heroic deaths of Tegshee,
Ayush and Bor and how they were able to overcome the fear of death, and
doubted whether or not could do it myself. Now felt that they had a
magic love which granted the power to sand up against death. This vast
love annihilated death. Around my mother, who loved those who remained
behind in their homeland, death was so very small. Thinking about
this today, feel that her body and mind were full of love, and that, if the
situation were to arise, like them, would have no doubt about death. This
was the beginning, the lover in me was opened up, and was made divine.
And wrote this poem.
My loving heart, like the shining lily in blossom.
My loving heart, like a place to live among the glistening stars.
(%)
t covers my face with the new tunes of the world,
it makes a gentle melody,
and here feel a new form, a physical loveliness..
My new rays of thought, the first impulse to do myself honor,
the pure and precious love,
and my tomorrow lights my today!
As a girl of three holds tenderly the apple she has grasped,
my love, my beautiful love, kiss your cheeks!
As the russet apples of autumn are in the girl's open palm,
though the impulse comes to me,
the sap remains in my body..
Oh, this loving heart of mine is the roseate apple's juice!
The force of life comes from within me, it shines in my cheeks and,
being simple and nanve, love you with a madness.
And love your refinement, like the wings of birds,
glittering in the smoke.
And through your charm and in the days of your smiling have found wisdom.
have understood that to love a kind and gentle woman is a blessing!
This is love, the first revolution in my young man's body, and
your lovely eyes, a symbol of this, my revolution.
smile my love, raise the standard and fight to change myself,
and with my silent song reveal the land of Trust
and Desire and Awaiting.
5 MUSC
When was very young, lay down on the banks of a stream and was
rather pleasantly amazed by what experienced. Skyblue melodies were
falling from the boundless, peaceful and clear skies into my body and
was as though myself was beginning to tune myself with the skyblue of
the heavens. stood up and ran about on the grass, the melodies were
pursuing me, and a green melody came from the vegetation and a blue
melody came from the rocks and many melodies came to me from the
rivers and knew that they had emerged from the universal sea of melody!
Without the words of my mother's lullabies, the secret which would calm
me with this lovely and elegant melody was nature itself. The whispering
of the "owers and the waves upon the lakes absorb into the !rst lullaby
and my mother lullabied me to sleep with the skies, the mountains and the
waters of the rivers. Even in my newborn's dreams there was one part of
(%(
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
the earth's music, the skies obscured my dreams and the sun brought solar
melodies into my heart. Once was grown up, was unable to live or to
be happy without music, the whole night "ooded from the stars and was
struck by the magic of the shining rain. n the distant village of Alekseevk,
felt that my body was asking about the wondrous quality of the music. On
an outside stage, on an autumn evening, ten beautiful girls were playing a
melancholy tune on violins, the skies were so clear, the movement of the
white clouds sometimes held the mind, a "ock of cranes in "ight. The tune
of the violins were ornaments in the evening air, the ten beautiful girls were
like a group of ten violins, the ten violins were like a group of ten beautiful
girls, a single uni!ed body of sound, the nomadic cranes circled unmoving
in the nearby sky, these violin melodies "oating quietly upwards, and they
"ew off in a V formation. But the music held all things in this way, the world
was a single body! Three years later, thanks to an old !ddle-player named
Gombojav, this extraordinary image was repeated in Ongo sum, before the
horses came out to run in the Naadam. Gombojav went outside and took
the ancient !ddle, and played the distant mountains close, and the world
took a short breath, it was as though there was deep silence. Soon, the
horses were "aring their nostrils, their hooves grew lighter, the girls raised
the standards and wept as the riders chanted the giingoo, and the race was
underway. When the horsehead !ddle was played, the Mongolian people
were under the jurisdiction of the heavens. These abilities were absorbed
into the people and the !ddles, and the shining world grew warmer and
the far off mountains seemed a more melodious skyblue. And wrote this
poem:
i
Gentle and powerful waves of music swamp me,
the entire world drains into the heart of my life!
A storm whistles in my breast, its tune rumbles in my mind.
A spring of music whispers in my heart, and lose my mind.
ii
sing from myself to the world outside,
the melody of my body changes from day to day.
With a melody without speech, reveal
an invisible conjurer, embodied in my heart.
(%*
iii
A sweet and pristine music of restful love
gently touches the melodic heartstrings.
Roseate rays touch upon the cheek of a boy of seventeen,
the melody sounds through his body.
iv
Gently empty myself into the river of melody,
deeply dive from harmony into my desires.
Beethoven calls from the island of hope in the sea of music,
summoning us to the land of music from our solar world.
v
am weak from waiting for the world, the sound of music
floats through the broad and pitchblack universe.
n the desolate wastes, the horsehead fiddle sounds its magic,
and my body is drenched in the rain of melody.
vi
n early times, with neither words nor people, melody occupied the world,
its freedom tasting melody,
emptying into the heart its sunwarmed tune,
And leading my feelings, my mind and body into uncontrolled melody.
know no other Buddha than the tune which held my own weak mind!
vii
Gentle and powerful waves of music swamp me,
the entire world drains into the heart of my life!
Freeing my thoughts and my body from wickedness,
music divine and reaching into all things!
viii
The path traversing suffering and anger and overwhelming pride,
an extraordinary music expresses humanity,
the sorrow of the dusty earth.
And heads droop, their minds lost,
the flowers of music fallen in emptiness,
the people of this good earth stand up,
and make of melody their friend.
(%!
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
ix
The seas and great mountains and cities with their own melodies,
the full moon, plants, animals, people and stones,
with their tunes,
All the melodies of the world come together as a harmony,
and the boundless universe
and the Earth are in the melody of music.
x
Despite myself, and lacking wisdom, marvel at this music,
approach the tower of wondrous melody,
sounding in the skyblue distance.
The precious melody
which soothes the small heart of the child in the crib,
the surgery of music
which treats the patient's unhealed wound!
xi
Showing together the precious, powerful, compassionate and rich
happiness, bow down to music, weeping for the people in the world..
When a person takes up the guitar, it's said he cannot do any harm, today
absorb into my heart the true weight of these amazing words.
xii
My son listens to the the horsehead !ddle's melody, he thinks a while
and looks at me. He grows up with wonder and love in his small Mongolian
heart. Receiving the universal tune from above the ridge of poetry, you
speak with the world, stretching the stirrups of the powerful melody, you
gallop against the shining "ow of music.
6 AM SLOWLY LVNG N THE PERFECT WORLD
One autumn evening, my wife stood on the river bank and wrung out a
clean white cloth. Nearby in the sand, my daughter played at setting up a
ger. The edges of the sky were full of joy, it seemed that the great red joy
of the sun was not absorbed, as though it was misty. Beneath the misty
sun, watched the picture of a woman cleaning a cloth and a girl playing in
the sand, a line of cranes strung out in the clear sky, and it was as though
had come to the world a thousand years ago.and a thousand thousand
(%"
years had passed up until this moment and today, as counted the stars,
my eyes and my mind were happy to watch this theater, it was as though
had become a giant!
have the strange feeling that time, at every moment, absorbs me and
that this is the measurement of my life. When was a small child, my
mother would wander about and gather sheep dung.
Where is this child now? His memories and his joy remain. When was
!fteen, would dream every night about a ship with a white sail and imagine
that the world had only happiness, and that was a shard of happiness!
Where did he go then? To think about this is good. n the passing of all
these moments, as take breath after breath, move on and am unable to
return to that point.
am happy that there remains the bridge of a unique memory, spanning
all things which have passed. From time to time, head over this bridge
towards my childhood.
And so, being full of a clear longing, replenish my heart and my mind,
and return with power to live in the world. But am not sad.
imagine myself a child playing with stones on the bank of the river, in
this complete and perfect life upon the earth. This world, its mountains and
hills, its rivers and its moon, its people, its entirety is known to me.
am fully preoccupied with love for all that know within myself, and that
celebrate in the shining sun. Though the sun rises every day, the perfect
world beneath does not appear old to me!
am in a hurry slowly to watch the blueness of the sky, slowly to listen
to the whispering of the rivers, and slowly to live among people, How can
people, the sun, the birds, trees and waters be too lovely? t is a crime
to live a few years amidst this perfection! This is not greed, rather it is an
attempt to feel completely the loveliness of existence. My father said, I shall
only go from the world on the day when my life comes to an end. for one
have not come to the end of my life, the road to the edge of the southern
slopes is a long one. When get there, will be as though absorbed into the
skies! Oh, my sun, my daughter, my brown hills flashing in the white glare,
these ger like thousands and thousands of flying swans, the herds of white
sheep, clumped together on the wild steppe, the happy smile on the face of
my bright young daughter, my love, my verdant mountains rising up in the
night.! am slowly living among you in the perfect world!
(%#
Ochirbat DASHBALBAR
am slowly living in this world.
The stars speak with the stars, the flowers whisper together.
Spring after spring, one year clasping the next, the cherry blooms.
am slowly living in the world!
A tune of rain cascades from the heavens.
A new city stands, glimmering in the grey mists.
Young girls smile, casting into my heart flowers from the spring meadows.
The cords of the sun play before my eyes, and time is created.
The sun's roundness stretches the oaks through the days.
The streams dart, like girls playing overhead and,
from the roots of the pines,
a mysterious piece passes through the branches!
A million, a hundred million people come from home,
and return, in dribs and drabs, to this place.
love it when the early morning rain drizzles,
as though quietly whispering in the homestead.
The ancient mountains of my motherland are coming close,
dissolving blue into the depths of my simple heart.
Crossing the mountains of childhood's distant memories,
The flowers awaken at dawn from their sweet dreams, and
open their delicate petals in the pleasant wind of stories.
Their aromatic scent is spread upon the cool breeze, and
yes, am slowly living in the perfect world!
Groups of stars resonate with pleasure in the sky,
thousands upon thousands of golden candles
glitter in the evening.
Happy, like a silken curtain aflutter in the wind, and yes,
am living slowly in the boundless universe!
Ulaanbaatar/Baruun Urt, 1982-3

The River Flows Gently

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