Deep in Dolpo*, a blue-eyed Buddhist monk
sank so deep into prayers inside a historic monastery
that his breathing became an annoyance to him.
Around him, the crumbling mural deities,
deities that counter sickness, intruders, and evil,
smiled and snarled. Outside, the hazy sun tinted
on Mount Dhaulagiri’s bald head
with furrowed forehead cracks, and stomach,
too shallow, devoid of snow.
A golden eagle flew across the serene sky.
It flew back and forth, rose, and fell
as The Dow Jones Industrial Average.
And a weathered prayer flag mounted
on a sturdy wooden pole outside
the monastery driven into a heap of stones
howled as the fearsome goddess Kali
in the holy mountain wind.
After an hour or so,
the monk stood up and watched
the blazing sun intensely from the corner of his eyes
leaning against his trodden hope.
“As a child, I never imagined that one day
I would see the Mountain devoid of snow
and I don’t know when will I see
the musk deer and the snow leopard again,”
he whispered to himself and sauntered
without any purpose behind the caravan of yaks,
the divine mountain troupe, walking together
at their pace carrying supplies and goods.
When the twilight settled in, he walked barefoot
with his eyes on the setting sun, entirely mesmerized,
as if he’d noticed the sunset for the first time.
He wanted to embrace it and kiss it hard
but he could not stop it from dipping down.
*Dolpo is a high-altitude culturally Tibetan region in the upper part of the Dolpa District of western Nepal.
Bhuwan Thapaliya is a poet writing in English from Kathmandu, Nepal. He works as an economist and is the author of four poetry collections. His poems have been published in Wordcity Literary Journal, Pendemics Literary Journal, Trouvaille Review, Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic Initiative (Witnessing Global Pandemic is an initiative sponsored by the Poetic Media Lab and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University), International Human Rights Art Festival, Poetry and Covid: A Project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, University of Plymouth, and Nottingham Trent University, Pandemic Magazine, The Poet, Valiant Scribe, Strong Verse, Jerry Jazz Musician, VOICES (Education Project), Longfellow Literary Project, Poets Against the War among many others.
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