Replenishing
 

The cuckoo returns from Mon,
the season of moist earth flourishes,
my lover and I have met
body and mind rise in ease.*
- by Tsangyang Gyatso, 6th Dalai Lama (1683-1706) 

I hear your voice call me, a song
floods a heart chamber. The cracked earth
in me, parched from sere
aloneness loses its grip

when our lips touch. Spring flies forward
on your bird wings, lifts us up in the breeze.
Then the rains come, washing away doubt:
water drains in rivulets.

I remember the seasons, how they come
and go, how the climate will change
if we should grow old. 

*translated from Tibetan by Annie Bien  

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Annie Bien received her first playwriting commission at the Soho Theatre Company in London. Her poetry has appeared in Quattrocento, Snakeskin, Lily, Loch Raven Review, Andwerve, Worm, Cadenza, Centrifugal Eye, Miller's Pond, and Times Online. Her fiction has appeared in The Wonderful World of Worders and Guildhall Press. Annie is a Pushcart nominee, runner up for the Georgetown Review Contest 2006, and on shortlists for the Guardian Poetry Workshop and Strokestown 2007 International Poetry Competition. She studies Tibetan Buddhist text translation with Robert Thurman and Lozang Jamspal.  

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the original Tibetan poem:
 

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autumn 2007 | kaleidowhirl
books and chapbooks from authors in this issue