“The rioters who wore cassocks were no real monks
and what they did is completely against Buddhist codes,”
said Ngawang Daindzin, a living Buddha.

All in all, it’s China’s Tibet, now and forever.

-Xinhua, 19 March 2008

Empty talk endangers the nation.
Practical work brings prosperity.

-a billboard in Shekou

There are living Buddhas
on every side of every war. Nothing
they do changes the coming into being

of it, the passing away of it.
Passing away catches the eye: bodies
count, the slow awakening

of corpses piled high
while cities burn.
Ten thousand Buddhas see

what is not there
after the city has died. But not
anger burning slow under

occupation, not
impatience at the slow
curve of a twisted universe turned,

one in ten thousand Buddhas
chants, to justice.
Resigned to the slow turn

of a world still
turning, all the time
in the world is occupied

with no. States
line up living Buddhas
like barricades, tip them

like buses in burning streets, check
body counts, silence what is
out of line, contain

slow burns off stage so
nobody shouts fire until
all that is left is ashes.

…on the fifth anniversary of the U.S. occupation of Iraq

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At the Mad Yak, a dancer
is contained in costumes
designed to make her
quaint and carry with her
a people who are of some other
world that might have been
but is not now. Her hands
are hidden by the long sleeves
of her costume, and her feet are
bound by steps written for tourists
in an idiom of occupation.

The audience is written
into the dance as well, Chinese on
one side, Euro-Americans
on the other, Tibetan
guides in back. I am
mesmerized by the authentic dance
of her eyes, weary beyond
words, which speak sadness
and will not be extinguished.

11 June 2004
Lhasa

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No call to deny some Messiah
three times when the world is nothing
but denial. There is no denying
what must be done, Gautama, when
suffering bursts into flame at Jokhang’s gate,
circles silent with a dog dying
on a forgotten street in Shekou. No
denying the world denying power
to turn. No denying the world denying
power to act. No denying the world
denying power to speak. No denying
the world. In the beginning, no word. No
denying the first stone cast by someone
who is not without sin. No denying Spinoza.

The stone falling would think itself free
if it could think. If it could sing, it would
sing a song of freedom, fall harmless
at the feet of an army no less
an army when a soldier, bloodied
by a stone, steps from the ranks. The stone
falls, singing. There is no denying the song.

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Pink and purple petunias mass with masses
on the boulevard waiting for buses
that pause in fleets where signs promise
they will stop. People in suits burst from nowhere,
sprint to catch one bus or the other leaving.
Patient petunias are never late. We are
waiting like people gracefully posturing
in the park, not waiting for the bus.
On a side street of abandoned shops
a crowd of people and dogs has gathered
on edges to watch an old hound circle
in the street, dying, silent. He may have been
hit, though there is no blood. He may have chosen
this place to die. He may be dying here by chance.
But I have no words to ask what happened. The dogs,
who have no more words than I, tell me more than
the people who do. There is nothing to be done.
The old hound circles, circles soundless –
no words for what happens. Some of us,
staggered by how easy it is to walk away from dying
when there is nothing to be done, will. But the crowd
will watch until the old hound dies, waiting.

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