When I was a child,
other children thought
me strange. When they drew
mountains or rivers,
I drew shapes they'd never seen.
I drew whales.
No one from our village
had ever been to the sea.
So when my mother saw
the monsters I drew
she took me on pilgrimage
to Namche.
I was filled with the journey,
until a Lama - a man who knew
the world - told my mother:
"She draws whales because
the sailor reborn in her
still thinks about the sea.
I have seen children come
from high in the mountains,
who draw only pyramids.
And once, when I was a young
disciple in the monastery,
I met a child who drew only
the turtle and the lizard;
he even played a yak's horn
as if it were a didgeridoo. And though
this child was no more than four,
I felt his soul was ancient as dust;
from him I learnt to use
the short time we're given.
But a child like yours,
a child with the sea in her,
she knows the breath of a wave
is the mantra of the land,
and takes the shape life gives her."
"Ah yes", my mother sighed,
"though she holds great life,
she herself needs to be held
like water in my hands."
With that, the holy man
blessed me with sand,
juniper and incense,
to find the earth in me.
And now I'm Lobsang's wife.
Standing at the window,
watching him chop wood,
I carry his child within me.
When I am old
I will tell this child my story:
how I went to Namche;
how, even though a Lama
found the earth in me,
there were times
when oars dipped through the clouds,
when I was the sea
and the moon was my mother watching
through her great whale's eye.
Tony Curtis, Three Songs of Home, The Dedalus Press, Dublin, 1998
* the poem was posted with the kind permission of the author
Tony Curtis (b. 1955) is an Irish poet. "Three Songs of Home" is a collection of poems inspired by his voyage into the Himalayas.