Shangrila


The bus was flying in the milky clouds
when I woke up on the narrow bed.
I saw nothing.
I knew I was near.

Another swirl up
the spiral mountain ladder,
a golden shaft of clean sunshine
splashed on the bus window.

The door was opened.

Silky clouds caressing dark stable mountains.
Shifting lights awakening green square fields.
Colorful scripture banners extending
on the flat roofs of Tibetan houses.

~

Stumps stand like tombs,
in the grass
as solemn as churches.

Lakes perch like pearls
among the mountains
as undisturbed as buddhas.

Trees grow like mysteries,
on the island
as silent as us.

Wooden warm skin of the trunks,
tenderly smooth at my fingers.

Quiet wet breath of the valleys,
refreshing and mesmerizing on my eyelashes.

~

A little duck
sails elegantly like a queen
through the sleeping lake,
lifting the emerald veil
with a gentle angle,
blurring the hill's figure
of a dark triangle.

She sails in my eyes.
She sails on her own way.

I rolled three thousand miles
north to south.
I dreamed four years
day and night.

Just to be one of the passers-by
on her territory,
one of the dreams
she passes by in five minutes.

~

I run away from my summer
and plunge into her spring,
into her drizzling rain,
into her heaving lanes,
into the jolly alien whistling of your lips.

I run away from the sulphurous sun
and huddle by the stove in a bamboo armchair,
in a dusky murmuring room,
in an old Tibetan musical house,
in the dancing rhythm of your brows.

I run away from city cries
and listen to the slow heartbeat of the old town,
to the thick tinkling of the camel bells,
to the foreign syllables of the silent Tibetans,
to the tired tenderness in your shaded eyes, as

a tiny island hidden by dark forests,
an azure lake shadowed by silver clouds,
this Shangrila merged by prayer and silence.
.

- for Sergio "The Ancient Star"

~

words: Chen Pingping, China
image: Peter Schwarz, Maine (Sitrah Ahra)