Translated by Buchung D. Sonam

My Lama

Think of me the precious one, my lama, O Gyalwa Tenzin Gyatso
Denied freedom, deprived religious rights, without freedom of speech,
O lama, look upon me with kindness!

Think of me the precious one, my lama, O Gyalwa Tenzin Gyatso
No equality, refused equal rights, discriminated against,
O lama, look upon me with kindness!

Think of me the precious one, my lama, O Gyalwa Tenzin Gyatso
Too much suffering, physical tortures, psychological hurts,
O lama, look upon me with kindness!
Think of me the precious one, my lama, O Gyalwa Tenzin Gyatso
Resistance, non-violent resistance, I offer my body on fire,
O lama, look upon me with kindness!

Think of me the precious one, my lama, O Gyalwa Tenzin Gyatso
Want to meet, meet of all Tibetans, want to rule my own country,
O lama, look upon me with kindness!
Look upon me with compassion!
Look upon me with empathy!!

Translated by Mr.Gareth Sparham

Monstrous Miracles on Nomad Lands

I dreamt a dream born on the wind across the sky
that grasslands so vast the fastest horse can’t gallop to their end
the natural garden of the sweetest smelling flowers, home
to the nomads with their bouteous laden tables and their countless herds,

Had all collapsed, the blue-skied meadows of that happy mountain
highland with its healing plants, all gone,
The horses, cattle, sheep all eaten down to skin and bones.
Alas!  If this my dream does not convince you of the truth
Go watch the films about it that they make today.

This actual homeland of the red-faced monkey-born from prehistoric times,
These nomad plains framed by the snowy peaks
No longer ours, grabbed by a powerful glutton, all we have: This is the
monstrous invader on the nomad lands.

The ladyfolk, hard working looking after hearth and home
Now living with a foreign husband, a theiving guest
Gobbling and guzzling voraciously everything in sight:
This is the monstrous guest now staying on the nomad lands.

The way we talk, our words that we have used ten thousand years
Are there, but we must mimic all the barking sounds of someone’s else’s
speech.
Cutting out our tongue and putting the tongue of others in its place:
This is the monstrous translator scholar of the nomad lands.

Still the pleasing notes of Buddhist words “On mani padme hum” sound out,
But nothing now beyong the mindless parroting of words--
A lineage kept alive by two legs stuck beneath a parrot’s crest:
This is the monstrous Sangha of town monks now on the nomad lands.

Brazen and behind closed doors this criminal termination of the birth
of the uneducated children of the Snowy Lands
to the few remaining good women of Kham, Amdo, and Central Tibet:
This monstrous development is the tragedy of the nomad lands.

To privatize food production and all means of livelihood
And stick a sharp-edged sword smeared with the honey of false words
into the vital part that lets us live:
This is the monstrous policy, the secret of the nomad lands.

Enthralled with their fake copies of the latest toys
They march to the drumbeat of the uplift of the poor
As they cart of the production of a hundred mines and herds of lifestock:
This is the monstrous thief, the hungry demon on the nomad lands.

They hide the mirror that reflects the facts of history behind their backs.
Out flicks the venom of their forked tongue speaking lies.
“The mountain yak’s a crocodile,” they say:
This monstrous tale’s the history of the nomad lands.

To be born human free to pursue happiness and peace
In the Snowy Land of Tibet, a righteous place pursuing the moral law,
And yet suffer the grinding mental anguish, caught in the iron trap of
oppression:
This is the monstrous bad luck that is the suffering of the nomad lands.

The outer trappings, when you cast a glance, they have a certain radiance,
But when you look more closely it’s just an empty pot of dust and ash:
This piebald drama of right and wrong so hard to trust.
That they could change so much is the monstrous miracle of the nomad lands.

In short, just like those in the operatic songs in verse they sing:
The foreign devils–– those who come as human relatives
With smiling faces but are devious, evil, cannibals inside,
With stealth they have arrived on to the nomad lands.

A hundred monstrous miracles like these I dreamed
So I have left the beloved Land of Snow for now
And borrowed the tip of a free tongue here on the edge of a spacious land
And published wide this sad song of the truth for this our world.

སྒྱུར་མཁན་དབྱིན་ཇིའི་དགེ་བཤེས་ལགས།