Offering, By Luowu Muga

The shapes of trees and rocks Are deeply immersed in winter, A ceremony is incubating Rows of branches stretch toward snowy clearings, Where earth meets sky, sunbeams pierce clouds; A white lane leads toward wakefulness. A branch hints that something is emerging; A tree is an emblem of a man; Trees in a row are emblems of a generation; My holy branch extends behind me...a slumbering village Not proclaiming its secrets; Hours that need to be retold Pace back and forth in a valley. The bimo's piercing eyes survey the land; Could there be a door openable by his tinkling brass bell? I have used up all words at my disposal All my ardent flames To get a glimpse of tantalizing wisps In cobwebs beyond that door, Yet amid the sounds of chanting A sigh gradually becomes perceptible, Coming from seventy generations in the past; Perhaps somewhere, in an era even more remote, Generations before that, back to the hundredth Or even the two hundredth, are being chanted By an even higher bimo. The departed are guided homeward by the scripture To pass through darkness and reach the ancestors' pasture To remain in a season abloom with bright flowers; That is the native place, the endpoint It is the world on which I meditate. We are still going forward By now we have traveled past High mountains and defiles Past grasslands and rivers Past the limit of memory. There will come a day I will seat myself on the grass On the edge of a meadow I will cease my steps and blessedly pay heed To sounds of a stream disappearing in my ears. translated by Denis Mair