Face à ce qui se passe actuellement au Tibet, je voudrais rendre hommage à une femme tibétaine, poète
exceptionnelle. Née en 1966, Woeser est éduquée sous l’égide du Parti chinois où son excellence fut très tôt détectée et
louée.
En 2003 elle publie, en chinois, une compilation de 38 nouvelles, Notes on Tibet, chez un
éditeur indépendant du Guangzhou, qui lui valent d'être aussitôt dépossédée de tous les honneurs dont on l'avait comblée (salaire, logement...).
Chassée de son "Unité de travail" et forcée à un exil volontaire à ... Pékin ; C'est de là
qu'elle envoie, aux occidentaux que nous sommes, un long et bouleversant poème, Secret Tibet, écrit en chinois et désormais traduit en anglais, mais pas encore en français
!
Le courage de ce cri d'une femme menacée m’incite à mettre en ligne ci-après son poème (suivi, dans l'article d'après, d’une traduction partielle que je complèterai dès que possible) :
Secret
Tibet
Dedicated to the imprisoned
Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, Bangri Rinpoche and Lobsang Tenzin
I
When I think of it, what do they have to do with me?
Palden Gyatso, imprisoned for thirty-three years;
Ngawang Sangdrol, locked up since she was twelve;
Then the newly-freed Phuntsok Nyidron
And Lobsang Tenzin, imprisoned somewhere.
I don’t know them, really, haven’t even seen their photos.
I only saw on the web, in front of an
old lama,
Shackles, sharp knives, cattle prods with multiple functions.
Loose skin, bony cheeks, furrowed wrinkles,
A recognizable handsomeness from his youth,
A beauty that doesn’t belong to the mundane.
Becoming a monk early in life,
The Buddha’s spirit glows in his
face.
October, outside Beijing, chilly wind
of autumn, a changed world.
I was reading the biography I downloaded in Lhasa,
Seeing the sentient beings of the Snowland crushed
By iron hoofs from outside. Palden Gyatso in a quiet voice:
"I spent most of my life in prisons
Built by Chinese in my country".
And through another voice,
One can "recognize the forgiving words."
Once in a while, the masked demon
reveals its true face,
Frightening even the ancient deities.
Yet, the challenges have emboldened the ordinary birth;
Who turn prayers in the deep nights into cries under the sun,
Who convert whines behind the high walls into songs spread wide.
They are arrested! Punishments
increased! Life sentences!
Executions postponed! Shot dead!
I usually keep quiet because I barely
know anything.
Having been born and raised under the bugles of the PLA,
I am a suitable inheritor of Communism.
Egg under the red flag, suddenly
cracked and broken.
Nearing middle age, belated anger is about to blurt from my throat.
I cannot stop my tears for the suffering Tibetans younger than me.
II
Yet, I do know two serious cases of prisoners still in jail,
Both of them tulkus and Khampas from the East.
Jigme Tenzin and Angang Tashi or
Bangri, Tenzin Delek;
These are their names from birth and their dharma names.
As if the forgotten password is recalled, these names
Push open the high gates of recent memory once closely guarded.
Yes, initially in a post office in
Lhasa he asked me
To write a telegram, saying with a smile:
"I don’t know how to write the words of Chinese."
He must be the first tulku among my many friends.
One year on New Year’s Day we went to a photo studio
On the Barkhor; in front of a tacky backdrop we
took a photo together.
I also brought him into Zhu Zheqin’s MTV to perform the elegant mudras.
A bespectacled U-Tsang woman became his
partner.
They started an orphanage for fifty kids begging in the street.
I sponsored one, but an incident soon
suspended my limited compassion.
Why were they arrested? I don’t know.
It’s said that one morning something happened,
Something about raising the Snow Lion flag at the Potala Ground.
I admit I neither wanted to know too much
Nor had any urge to visit him in the prison.
Yes, several years ago he stared at an
apple rolling
In strong currents of the Yarlung Tsangpo:
"Look, the karmic result is coming."
I, drawn by his fame, didn’t know how to react to his pain.
He is well known in this era of shifting sides and silence;
Teaching dharma from village to
village,
Confronting the government on its false policy.
The peasants, nomads, and orphans
He has raised call him Big Lama.
He is also a thorn in officials’ eyes
And needle in the flesh; removal, the only relief.
With a pack of tricks, they finally trapped
him after 9/11.
Magnificent way to accuse him, in the name of "anti-terrorism,"
Punishing one to warn many. They said he hid bombs
And pornography, as well as planning five or seven bombings.
I remember, half a year before he was locked up, he was very sad:
"My mother passed away, I am going into a
one-year retreat for her."
Such a sincere follower of the Buddha,
How could he be involved in bombing and killing?
III
I also knew Yoen Lama who taught me the sutras
For taking refuge and meditation. In Sera Monastery,
His students were crying and said to me
that when he was meditating,
Police cars suddenly took him away to the infamous Gutsa prison
For his involvement in this or that attempt to overturn the government.
With a few monks, I rushed to see him;
The road was swirling dust without today’s paving.
Under the hot sun, we saw only the icy faces of the armed soldiers.
As suddenly as he was arrested, so he was
released
For lack of real evidence. Having survived the catastrophe,
With heavy emotion he gave me a strange rosary
Made from steamed prison buns,
Bright yellow flowers outside his cell window,
And crystal sugar his family sent.
Every bead is ingrained with fingerprints;
The warmth of his touch can still be felt on each of the beads
From reciting the mantras for those ninety odd days of humiliation.
All 108 beads, each one is hard like stubborn pebbles.
I also know a nun only half my age. That
summer;
While she marched around the Barkhor shouting the slogan
Known to every Tibetan, plainclothes policeman rushing to cover her mouth,
I was shopping for pretty dresses for my 28th birthday.
And at fourteen, I was busy passing exams
To go to high school the next year in Chengdu.
One of my essays was dedicated to the PLA
fighting Vietnamese.
Seven years later, after expulsion from her
nunnery,
She runs errands for a kind merchant. She is tiny
And always wears an ugly woollen hat, even under the strong sun.
"Why not put on something else?”
I intended to give her a fabric hat. She
refused:
"I have a headache, the woollen hat makes me feel better."
"Why?” I never heard such a thing.
"They beat me in jail. My skull was damaged.”
As for Lobten, a professional with a bright
future everyone envied,
After a crazy night of drinking, he alone
got on a bus to Ganden Monastery.
It’s said he threw lungta on the pass and shouted that fatal slogan
Several times. He was immediately arrested by police
Stationed in the monastery. The Party Secretary decreed:
"True words spill out after getting drunk."
One year later, one more ex-prisoner becomes a vagabond
On the streets of
Lhasa.
IV
Having got so far in composing this poem,
I am unwilling to turn it into an accusation.
But among the imprisoned, why do the ones in monastic robes
Always outnumber the others? This contradicts commonsense.
We all know the line separating violence
and non-violence.
We are indeed the offspring of the holy Ogress – Sringmo,
Preferring to have monks and nuns suffer for us.
Let them be beaten, let their sitting wear out the jail floor.
Endure it, lamas and anis, endure it for us!
There is no way to know how they have
tortured one’s body and mind,
Those intolerable minutes and seconds, those unbearable days and nights.
Mentioning the word "body," I cannot but shiver.
I am so afraid of pain, a slap could leave me shattered.
In shame, I count days for them, their endless sentences.
Oh, the hearts of Tibet are beating in the hell of reality!
Yet, in sweet teahouses along the
Lingkhor,
Mindless gossips fly from table to table.
Yet, in the gardens serving tea along the Lingkhor,
Retired cadres revel in playing mahjong until sunset.
Yet, in small bars along the Lingkhor,
Plump pot-bellied officials get drunk every
night.
Oh, let’s be happily passive; it is better than becoming an amchok.
"Amchok" means ear and refers to those invisible informers.
Such a graphic nickname. Such Lhasawa humour!
Betrayals by quietly peeping and
whispering,
The more one does so, the larger the
reward.
It can make one big. Once, in the street,
Strangely, all of a sudden I had to tightly cover my ears,
Worrying they could fall into someone’s hands if I wasn’t alert;
Worrying they could become amchoks reaching out to everywhere,
Growing sharper, like Pinocchio’s nose getting longer everytime he lies.
How many suspicious "ears" are around?
How many are wrongly suspected amchoks?
Who is an amchok? Who is not?
Such an absurd scene, it’s more destructive than sugarcoats or cannonballs
Thinking of these, sadly and reluctantly I discovered:
There is another Tibet hidden behind the
Tibet we live.
This now makes it impossible for me to write this poem lyrically!
V
I remain silent. I have long become used to it
For a single reason, because I am full of fear.
Why is it like this? Who can clearly explain?
After all, everyone feels the same, I understand.
Someone said: “Tibetans’ fear can be felt through touch."
But, I want to say, the real fear has long
permeated the air, everywhere.
At a mention of past and present, he burst
into tears
Frightening me. His face was covered with
the shawl
Of his burgundy robe, while I could not control my laughter
To disguise the pain that had gripped my heart.
While people around glared at me with blame in their eyes,
He lifted his head from the robe. We exchanged eye contact.
The slightest shiver made us aware of the weight of each other’s fear.
A reporter from Xinhua, an offspring of
northern Tibetan nomads,
Smelling alcohol-soaked on Moon Festival evening,
Scolded me with his Party throat and tongue:
"You think you can find out something?
Who you think you are?
You think you can change anything?
We change everything.
Why you create problems?”
Am I really breaking any rule? I wanted to talk back
But only saw in his face the cruelty of a running dog.
There are more people, more serious unrest.
Would all of them be knocked out of the
game?
I nearly hear them singing in soft chanting
voices:
“Fragrant lotus, withering under the sun’s rays;
Snow mountains of Tibet, being scorched under the burning sun.
O! Rock of Permanent Hope, protect us
The youth swearing to bring independence!"
No, no, I did not intend to overshadow poetry with politics,
I am only wondering, in prison, why the anis in their teens are fearless.
Thus, let me write, only for remembrance of
my pitiful moral pride.
Of course I am not qualified to find out
anything, change anything.
I am only admitting to my innermost feelings.
Far away from home, amidst foreigners, eternal strangers,
With slight embarrassment, safely and quietly, I say:
When I think carefully, how can they have nothing to do with me?
And this poem can only express my humble respect, my concern from afar.
(Translated by Susan Chen, Jane Perkins, Buchung.D.Sonam, Tseten
Gya, Phuntsok Wangchuk, Sangjey Kyap and Tenzin Tsundue)
