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| TAIWAN. 2010. 30th WORLD CONGRESS OF POETS |
FOREWORD
Poet Lyn Coffin Bavuudorj is a strong and compelling poet. He takes you on
journeys of the mind and heart. Prepare yourself to travel, reader.Bavuudorj began writing poems when he was 11-- His first
poem was written near the highest mountain in Outer Mongolia, though (for the
sake of his sons' education) he lives now in Ulanbator. These facts help one to
understand how a relatively young man has managed to put together such as
astonishingly rich oeuvre- 8 books and counting, with such a strong and abiding
spiritual presence. To paraphrase an American proverbial expression- you can
take the Mongol poet away from the mountain, but you can't take the mountain
away from the Mongol poet.Bavuudorj writes refreshing, surprising poems. They are
often philosophical or spiritual in imagery-- "This window is like the
unblinking eye of God." He is the master of the unsaid: in
"Meditating in the Temple," the Buddha arrives and "stands here
beaming" but after a three-dot ellipsis, returns weeping, "wiping his
tears on his sleeves." I love his lyrical use of repetition-- "having
left behind the cane of desire,/ having tried to sleep on planetary
waves,/having lost the brightest of my gemlike feathers." He moves easily
from his native religion--"I ran from the palace of the cold, cold
Buddha" to an extravagant and highly-wrought romanticism: How many
countless silkworms went into the weave of your dazzling golden sari?" He
has the craft and ingenuity of a Herbert or a Donne: in his poem "To a
Woman of the East," he begins with a godlike "Orient" who
creates beautiful lips and "draws" beautiful eyes, but by the time he
has reached the poem's conclusion, the beautiful woman has become the beloved
audience of one whom the poet addresses, the gorgeous incarnation of all that
is eastern: "Oh, Orient, darling Orient."
MEDITATING IN THE TEMPLE
The East is my temple in the void
It has one window like a crystal pointing West
This window aches like a heart,
is as sensitive as an eye in the forehead of Heaven
This window welcomes the sun and sorrow in the morning
and gracefully meets the moon at night
This window is like the unblinking eye of God
Who knows how many have come here like me, and stood in
fear?
The Buddha comes here in a flying red cloak
Like a burning candle with a flame the color of blood,
the Enlightened One stands here beaming
When he returns weeping, wiping his tears with his sleeves
I walk past him, carrying heather and incense
This mysterious window that reflects the whole world
is plain but uncommonly conscious
And it's looking toward the West
