Walking the Wall

I was reading through a book of Mongolian poetry that my brother sent me (entitled Modern Mongolian Poetry), and while much of it was influenced by the socialist party and revolutions going on in the early 1900s, many of the poems capture the feel of the wide open spaces, the quiet of the steppes–even in the English translations. One poem in particular caught my eye, written by Sendenjavyn Dulam in the 1950s:

Clearing Sky’s Blue

From this clearing sky’s blue we learn

To know the light of understanding

From this far shimmering steppe we take

The generosity of  an open heart

From the quick rivers which are never still we draw

Faith in attainment of our goals

From the unmoving patient mountains grey with age we hear

The legend of the will that endures

On the pink bloom of a wild peony we discover

The love which consecrates our hearts.

In the three singing months of summer

We feel youth’s force within us

On the autumn that withers the lush steppe

We gain the hardness that withstands trials

In the rime of winter’s ringing frost

We read the life of our own whitening hair

In the endless reaches of our homeland

Is knowledge of the law of life.

 The italics are my own, not the authors. I really enjoyed the sense of what the author gained from his world, and what he expected the reader should gain from the world around them:

• we learn–understanding
• we take–generosity
• we draw–faith
• we hear–will
• we discover–love
• we feel–youth
• we gain–hardness (strength)
• we read–life
• is–knowledge

I think that sometimes in this modern hectic world, we don’t even notice our surroundings enough to learn all these things from the sky, the rivers, the mountains, the flowers, the seasons–all around us are so many lessons to be learned but we miss them all because our eyes are fixed on the ground or the goal of getting through work, or school, or another day–time is eaten up instead of lived. My goal this week is to be a little more aware of the world, see something small, but beautiful, a piece of knowledge in the form of a leaf or a flower.

Note: My brother took the picture in Zereg, Hovd, Mongolia a couple months ago.