Songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama: Redux

 So I was quite quite wrong. I had misread the first two lines and mistranslated the last. (To be fair to me, these poems, our Shakespeare’s sonnets, do lend themselves to rich and varied interpretation. But ok, perhaps not this one. I was basically just wrong.) This is the corrected effort. I feel that the “thousand” must echo the thousand arms and eyes of Avalokiteshvara so I prefer “thousand-armed” to “thousand-petaled.” Maybe this is not right. Also I don’t know if a ha.lo’i me.tok is a hollyhock flower. Where is a horticulturalist when you need one? I also ended up changing “chapel” to temple. I still have misgivings; the word lha.khang does not translate perfectly. Both “chapel” and “temple” have too many overtones seeping in from different cultures and ages. But needs must.

If the thousand-armed hollyhock flower

Leaves as material for offering,

Please take me, the young turquoise bee,

Into the temple as well.