Wednesday, April 23, 2008
The Dalai Lama's Wild Youth
by Richard Smoley
The latest issue of my old college literary magazine, The Harvard Advocate, appeared in my mailbox a few days ago. It contains some translations of some poems by the Dalai Lama—not the current one (the Fourteenth, or if you like the XIVth), but the Sixth. He was something of a different character, I guess, from the current occupant of the post.
Although since all of the Dalai Lamas are said to be the same being, incarnations of Avalokiteshvara or Chenrezig, the god of compassion, I suppose one could say that the Dalai Lama had a wild youth a few centuries back. Anyway, some samples:
If my girl could not die
there'd be no end to beer;
we'd stay in youth's haven.
In this I put my trust.
Is not my love since youth
descended from the wolves?
Once she's known skin and flesh
she bolts back to the hills.
Our tryst in the dense woods
of the southern valley
a parrot only knows,
all else are ignorant.
O parrot, please do not
repeat our secret words.
—Tsangyang Gyatso, the Sixth Dalai Lama
translated by Nathan Hill with Toby Fee
From The Harvard Advocate, winter 2008
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