Streaking past, a momentary cloud, there goes hope, a severed kite;
Rain-grateful the stream: but the dunes, still menacing, forlorn all around;
Hanging over our world, the inevitable: shivering among a hundred stars;
Will we go blighted, Chenrezig, without the Polestar through the darkest night?
Crimson-crowned, the snow-peak, now, the end we shudder to think past;
a poem written on the occasion of the Dalai Lama's birthday
Chenrezig is Tibetan for the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshwara, the great Buddha of mercy, and the Dalai Lama is considered the human manifestation of Chenrezig in our world