Framed
Sights of Silence
Photographed by Shivani Gupta
Bow of willow, glittering arrow, how could he miss what he already held? Inexorable journey of the Indus — winnow of cold air.
I wondered if one star may pull another from its place in the sky, and now I know it’s more like being an arrow loosed from a bright bow, sent burning through the dark. My father and the hawk-eyed man, arrow for arrow in a long shot, the target a flower affixed to a poplar tree, everything pinned to that one wild rose.
But there was one, one with the glow like an apricot or the sun — Goddesses whisper his name, Gyalu Gyarsha, tip clear water down from cupped hands to bathe him. La-e-Lhamo — winged spirits not from this world of rock and apricot and mountaintop.
The holy men gathered under the apricot trees but the Lhamo had no thought for them, had seen a hundred like them.
Have you seen my love? The man asks the spirit in the rock. He is holy but it does not change the rock’s silence.
But I am not without my own magic. Smoke and spirits murmur — I left my ring, silver and turquoise, to quiet the earth. But it couldn’t stop the curse.