A Poem from Mongolia explicated

A poem from Mongolia written by Begz YAVUUKHULAN

Translated into English

 Explicated by Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

SPRING

In the enclosures , noisy

Flocks of rooks rush

Tearing the frozen dung

SUMMER

By day , mouths open,the young

Camels stand, longing for cold

Upon their bodies

AUTUMN

In the pool, where the willow

lined river turned aside

The returned of a yellow leaf orphan

WINTER

The rush of the winter camp, the

Winter shelter growing dark

The cattle track hurrying alone

Explication

Mongolia is a vast country. It is as big a country as the continent of Europe perhaps. Geographically it is distributed among extremes of climate. The Gobi desert with sands and sands and sands is stretched in the south. Then there is the vast grassland known as the Steppe. There are mountains touching the blue heavens whence the rills and the rivers flow to green the valleys. The seasons in Mongolia are as it were loud. The summer is terribly  hot. The winter  is biting cold. Sometimes the temperature is as low as minus thirty degree centigrade. The spring is the copula that intervenes between winter and summer. The autumn is the copula between the summer and the winter. That gives us the notion of a wheel or rather the cycle of seasons. Mongolian poets like NATSAGDORJ or YAVUUKHULAN looks upon the cycle of seasons as a whole. And that could remind one of the four stages of human life as well as the twelve nidanas or the wheel of life. YAVUUKHULAN is very reticent in his employment of words. Just as a painter simply draws a line or two to suggest a gamut of feelings or else, a crowd of scenes to be experienced by the mind’s eyes so does the poet with a few words and  a pencil sketch of one or two motifs suggests a whole range of experiences and sensations.. Roland Barthes observes that there are two kinds of texts in the writerly text and the readerly text. In the case of readerly text, the reader need not exert himself to get at the meaning of the text. But the writerly text compels the reader to explore its meaning. The poem under study is a writerly text. It opens with Spring. The very word spring in English  means to leap or to bound to come or to appear suddenly and so on.  Spring also might mean a flow of water from the ground, the source of a stream. The poet notes only one happening to suggest the season called spring. Noisy flocks of rooks tearing the frozen dung rush in the enclosures. The enclosures stand for the place enveloped where the nature red in tooth and claw cannot make its way. But now, the crows have shattered the walls made of frozen dung and enter the enclosures. The flock of noisy crows bursting into the enclosure implies fresh life appearing suddenly . The enclosure might stand for tomb as well as the womb. That which was a tomb turns into a womb with the advent of spring giving intimations of new birth. Noisy flocks of rooks rushing speak of eros or the zest for life inspiring every hollow every cave and every enclosure.The crow is one of the most sacred birds of Mongolia. Even a Lama incarnated as a crow. There were tribes in Mongolia who were called the crows. It were they who defended Mongolia from the attacks of the invaders. And of course  the frozen dung stands for life and consciousness in hibernation. With the advent of spring , Mongolia awakes from her hibernation and is charged with a fresh vigour and activity.

Next comes the summer. How is summer? One single stroke in the imagery of a camel longing for cold  vividly suggests the entire series of summer scenes in Mongolia. Cattle rearing and animal husbandry are one of the chief occupations of the people in Mongolia. They rear horses, camels, sheep, goat and cattle. With the advent of summer, all these domestic animals are helpless and thirsty. The imagery fingers at the severe heat that scourges Mongolia during summer. We can imagine how burning the sands are in the Gobi desert under the eyes of the hard taskmaster the Sun.  Young camels with their mouths open long for cold upon their bodies. This is the imagery of touch. The longing might stand for craving – the very craving that impels our persons to go through births and deaths and births. At the same time, the longing for cold might mean the longing for heat to vanish or the longing for the extinction of the lamp of craving. In other words it might mean the longing for nirvana.

The Summer is followed by  Autumn. How do we know the advent of autumn? Well , the return of yellow leaf orphan in the pool where the willow lined river turned aside is the signifier of autumn. With autumn, leaves from the trees are shed. Once fallen from the tree it is an orphan without parents and without a home. It floats on a pool where the willow limed river turns aside .But think of the willow. It was a shaman  who worshjpped the Fire god and the willow tree leaped up.The willow which sprang from fire worship is fond of water because the waterways are the ways that gods  and  spirits avail themselves of. The willow tree is at the centre of the universe What could  then the river lined with willow trees be? The universe is infinite and any point  where the willow tree stands could be the centre of the universe. And one wonders whether the yellow leaf an orphan which has no longer any worldly attribute is the symbol of a  god man or a spirit or a shaman that lingers in the passage way of spirits Well if the autumn stands for the fall of dry leaves it might also stand for renunciation or prabrajyaa

Winter follows Autumn.The rush of the winter camp might mean the tall plant like grass  with which the portable houses or gers in Mongolia are raised along with other materials. The winter shelter grows dark.it is in this darkling environment that the animals hurriedly hie to their shelters.Now the activities in Nature and the world without will be suspended. Men must go inward and meditate.With the advent of spring a fresh lease of life and fresh birth will accelerate along the road of life. Every death begets a fresh birth and a person has to rotate along the wheel of seasons The cycle of seasons is recurrent.. One wonders whether there is any escape from the merry go round