before the word

there’s a red moon in a black sky tonight

and my city lies beneath this bloody eye

like an open wound. something primeval

is at work, the century thrown

back a thousand years, everything is

believable and anything can happen.

Maybe on a night like this our ancestors

went to bed as men and rose as tigers,

words would summon prey to a hungry

traveller in a forest, a mantra would bring

rain, wind or stop a lesion bleeding.

This was before the word of god. 

Perhaps on a night like this, when a dragon

cloud winds itself around the moon,

the dance of the thlen begins, and the

nongshohnoh brings out his crude weaponry.

where is the sound of the duitara, faint

and trembling upon the breeze, to warn

the unwary? it has been silenced

by the choir. On a night like this, though,

I think I hear it, penetrating darkened

windows, slithering over old waterfalls,

laying down propitiatory verses to a

watchful, ancient god.

our names

our names

are old names.

unwritten unrecorded

wrenched from stone

mawngap

mawsynram,

mawphlang

or coaxed from water

umiam,

umlyngka

umphyrnai.

light as the wind

on a white stork’s back,

which travelled here in summer

and rested at Demthring.

they aren’t carved on our

monoliths. the mawbynna

are smooth from relentless

wind and rain.

we have no letters

with which to etch

those come and gone,

save the sounds

of our names

we set to music.

they aren’t embedded

in lawkyntang,

our sacred forests

remain untouched

nor cast down rivers as

sacrificial flowers.

instead they travel

with us on our children’s

backs, in rough bamboo

baskets heavier than

dead wood.

our names

are old names.

untranslated.

sitting uneasy on

a foreigner’s tongue.

untraceable on parchment

save for stories

behind our names

we set to music.

No names save for

old names

after water um

and stone maw

“Where will your history

be found?”

For that you must play

our music, and search for

lumsohpetbneng,

the mountain at the centre

of the sky.