At the Tagong Steppe

1. Insomnia in the Highlands

The highlands
are not a suitable place
for sleeping
This is the sentence
I wanted to write
after my first sleepless night
in the village of Tagong
Then I wanted to try and find
a couple of reasons for my insomnia
I searched a long time,
searched till dawn


2. The Past Remakes the Zheduo River

All of the reoccurring past
has nothing to do
with the Zheduo river before my eyes
But after I understood this truth
I decided to carry the past
into the bus and leave this place
I knew that from this point on
the Zheduo was ordained
to become a sorrowful river


3. Dengba, the Village Party Secretary

A brilliant face,
this Tibetan man named Dengba
He shook my hand and said
My name is Dengba
On this steppe of few inhabitants
this kind of courteousness
was a nice surprise


4. Four Tibetans

21st of August
I was in Tagong village
and couldn’t sleep
I had to get up in the middle of the night
and saw in the next room
four Tibetans
playing mahjong


5. Highlands aren’t Suitable for Writing Poetry

Writing poetry makes your heartbeat quicken,
the air is thin
every word might consume
a liter of oxygen


6. Almost Hit by a Stone

Before this moment, I was
holding myself back, feeling discouraged
In the end that stone
brushed past me

That was a stone from
the Yana sacred mountain
According to the locals,
its crushing trajectory down
takes more than three hours by horse
I didn’t ride a horse,
wasn’t on a horse
I was only holding myself back, feeling discouraged
In the end, this stone
didn’t belong to me

It could also be said that
under specific circumstances
I was nearly hit by a falling stone


7. Lying Down is the Only Way to Write Poetry

Only my lying on the bed
lets the words also lie flat
Every action
attempts to reduce the consumption of
oxygen

My left hand holds a notebook
My right a pen
I know that this position
presses exactly on my heart

But what can I do?
As a few words slowly come out,
at least it relieves
my breathing

Like this lying on his side
A poet in the highlands must recline
to be able to write poetry
Yet it’s such a strange position
Can I declare like this:
I — the side-lying poet


8. The Gold Dredging Ship

These past few days, I’ve constantly been thinking
about the gold dredging ship

I went with a film production team to
the Tagong steppe
from the campsite to the movie scene
every day back and forth watching
that huge gold dredging ship on the bank of the river
Even out here on this vast wilderness
its body is still sufficiently enormous,
a mammoth with a trail of rusty patches
It is already dead, nobody asks,
this goes without saying
The problem is that
I’ve kept thinking about it these few days,
this gold dredging ship
What I’ve probably thought about most is
why no one has
taken it out of the highlands

AT THE TAGONG STEPPE