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| 这张照片拍摄于去年9月21日，既是“静默管控”的拉萨封城41天，也是我母亲离世42天。 |
今天，2023年2月11日，是我母亲离开人世整整半年的日子。这首献给母亲的诗，写于拉萨因新冠疫情被封城期间，因此也是献给故乡拉萨的诗。前不久，我在给友人Dechen Pemba 的访谈中写道：“所谓‘疫’，不只是指疫病，也指灾难。……对于我来说，我所经历的正是双重的不幸，双重的灾难：丧母；遭遇新冠疫情，都发生在拉萨。”在我的“双疫”之时写的这首诗，现已译成英文发布于High Peaks Pure Earth(高峰净土)网站。感谢Dechen 啦，感谢译者Christopher Peacock。
满城回响救护车催命般的鸣笛声……
——献给我的母亲，献给我们的拉萨
茨仁唯色
预先设好的手机铃响，提醒供酥[1]的时间到了，
我放下奥兹的《爱与黑暗的故事》[2]，
起身走向门口，将糌粑和特殊药粉搅拌的酥，
均匀地撒在熏黑的不锈钢盘子上，
打开电炉，烤出的香味随烟飘散[3]。
已值正午，烈日当空，白云寥落，
点开噶玛巴念诵《极乐净土愿文》的视频，
却听见不远处传来救护车的鸣笛声，
很急促，催命般，又时断时续，像是不只一辆，
像是满载了不少病人，需要快快地送走。
送往哪里？听说拉萨的方舱已增至八、九个[4]，
而方舱这个词没译成藏语，若汉语发音不准，
就成了藏语谐音的猪圈或乞丐的房子[5]。
这些日子，这三十多天被“静默管控”的日子，
救护车的嘶鸣是这座空空荡荡的城市
唯一的最强音（想起新话“时代最强音”），
还有什么声音呢？啜泣，呼告，谁听得见？
院子的四面墙头有雀鸟啁啾，盛开的
月季红得像鲜血，被小蜜蜂无声地吸吮；
长得像花豹的野猫跃下堆满朽木的房顶兀自离去。
越盖越高的世俗居所遮挡了颇章布达拉，
也遮蔽了原本可以随风传来的风铃声。
我静下心，举起金刚铃，朝着香烟袅袅的
酥，摇响三次，并须念诵三次：嗡啊吽
多么盼望走了整整一个月的阿妈会听见，会再来……
然后，我会沿着那个永别的深夜，我消瘦的阿妈
被年轻力壮的天葬师放上担架前，给她穿上
她喜爱的那套绿衬衣、绿条邦典[6]的藏装，
从刹那空寂却残留香味的卧室抬出的路线：
穿过用一条条挽结的白哈达隔出的通道，
两边是残花凋落的纷乱枝条出自她的栽种；
绕过供着美丽佛陀塑像和大桶清水的木桌，
桌下用糌粑画了古老的雍仲符号，而窗户上
映出几十盏点燃的酥油灯，摇曳着，如同照亮莫测的中阴；
依顺时针方向转一圈，再依逆时针方向转一圈，
这是让亡灵找不到回家之路的意思吗？
不料，紧攥着拴在担架上的哈达走在前面的我
一个踉跄，是阿妈不愿离去吗？泪水奔涌，
走出大门……不，我不能走出大门，据说奥密克戎
仿如可怕的巨兽，张开血盆大口，蹲伏门外！
是的，我们都不能走出大门，所有人；
我们都要乖乖地听话，所有人；
我们都须随时听令，所有人（新话称“不漏一人”）；
或者排长队做核酸，或者等大白[7]入户做核酸，
有天半夜还做过什么抗原，就像某种被操控的游戏……
人们啊，要活着还真是花样百出，心存侥幸，
最多隐约地感觉到有些深渊早在暗夜挖好。
对了，我们还要双手接过恩赐的连花清瘟[8]，
我们还要感激涕零，三呼万岁……
但我此刻不关心疫情，我已深陷生离死别的疫情！
啊，我的阿妈，你走过的这条离开我的，
离开你多年前一手盖起来的这座宅院的路线并不长，
如今我每日三次供酥都会反复地走来走去，
会边走边念六字真言，声音很大，如同呼喊，
就仿佛，被打动的观世音菩萨会垂怜丧母的人……
而我抬头，深邃、碧蓝的天空一缕白云飘来，
于是我再也、什么都听不见：救护车的不停
哀号，金刚铃的三声脆响，法王声若洪钟的救度，
以及这些日日夜夜我的祈祷……我啊我
什么都听不见，只听见那个生养我的亲人
最后的叹息：“来不及了，已经来不及了……”
2022年9月12日写，15日改，28日再改，于拉萨
注释：
[1]酥：གསུར་是一种烟供。传统上，须用特殊药粉及“三白三甜”（酥油、牛奶、酸奶；冰糖、红糖、蜂蜜）与糌粑搅拌，点燃后或烤出的香烟是某种食物，以求上供下施，以及亲人亡灵享用。
[2]《爱与黑暗的故事》是以色列作家阿摩司·奥兹（1939-2018）写的长篇自传体小说。
[3]传统上，是在陶罐内放置点燃的牛粪，再撒上酥，以供亡灵七七四十九天享用。
[4]修改这首诗时得知在拉萨盖好的、或临时设的方舱不止八、九个，而是二十多个，甚至更多，并扩延至附近的墨竹工卡县等。另外，将核酸检测为阳性、甚至也有阴性的人们拉往方舱的车，除了救护车，更多的是公交车，因为常常是深夜拉人，被拉萨人以黑色幽默的方式戏称为“恐怖片：拉萨午夜的公交车”。据公交公司的报告，截止9月23日，转运人员达到34.9万人次，而拉萨只有 80余万人口。补充：至9月28日，即我母亲离世“七七”四十九日，拉萨封城已是49天，尚不知何日解封。
[5]藏语的猪圈发音“帕仓”，乞丐的房子发音“邦仓”，与汉语方舱谐音。
[6]邦典：པང་གདན།，藏人妇女藏装裙袍上的围裙。
[7]大白：也是中国发明的一种新话，指参与疫情防控的人员，因穿白色防护服被称为“大白”。
[8]连花清瘟：中国发明的用中药材制成的以对付新冠病毒的药，是中国卫健委的推荐用药。
（这首诗发表于自由亚洲唯色博客2022年9月20日：https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/pinglun/weiseblog/ws-09202022131133.html。之后有修改和注释补充）
“The City Echoes with Ominous Ambulance Sirens…
––For my mother, for our Lhasa”
By Woeser
Translated by Christopher Peacock
The preset alarm sounds on my mobile, reminding me it’s time for the sur[i] offering
I put down Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness,[ii]
Rise and go to the doorway, take the sur mixed with tsampa and special medicinal powders,
And sprinkle it evenly in the smoke-blackened stainless-steel dish
I turn on the hotplate, and a roasted fragrance wafts up with the smoke.[iii]
It is midday, the scorching sun high in the sky, white clouds scattered about
I play a video of the Karmapa reciting the Prayer to be Reborn in the Blissful Pure Land,
But all I hear is the wail of an ambulance siren coming from nearby,
Urgent, ominous, intermittent, like it’s not just one,
Like they’re full of patients who need to be taken away in a hurry,
But taken where? Apparently there are eight or nine fangcang in Lhasa now[iv]
This word fangcang hasn’t been translated into Tibetan, and if your Chinese pronunciation is off,
It becomes the Tibetan word for a pigsty or a beggar’s hovel.[v]
These days, thirty-plus days now of “silent management,”
The whine of the ambulance is the only “strongest voice” in this empty city
(as in that Newspeak phrase, “the strongest voice of our times”)
What other sounds are there? Who can hear the sobs and cries?
Sparrows chirp atop the walls of the courtyard, The roses
In full bloom are red as blood, sucked silently by the little bees;
A stray cat, like a leopard, leaps off the rooftop piled with rotten wood and steals away.
The worldly apartment blocks, ever more and ever higher, block out the Podrang Potala,
And block out the sound of the chimes that used to carry on the wind.
I calm myself, raise the vajra bell, and face the sur and its curling smoke,
I ring it thrice and recite three times: Om ah hum
How I wish that Ama, gone a month now, could hear it, and come again…
And then, I would follow that deep night of eternal farewell, before Ama, so frail,
Was placed on the stretcher by the sky burial master, young and strong,
And dressed in that green Tibetan shirt and the matching pangden[vi] she loved so much,
Out from the bedroom, suddenly silent, but where a fragrance lingered:
Through a passageway separated by knotted white khatas
Flanked by tangled branches and withered flowers from all her planting;
Past the wooden offering table with the beautiful Buddha statue and the vat of fresh water,
The ancient yungdrung symbol made out in tsampa beneath, while the window reflects
dozens of lit Butter lamps, flickering, as if to illuminate the unfathomable bardo;
A clockwise circumambulation, and then one anticlockwise,
Is that so the departed won’t be able to find their way home?
As I walked ahead tightly clutching the khata tied to the stretcher, all of a sudden
I stumbled, did Ama not want to leave? The tears flowed,
And I walked out the door… No, I can’t walk out the door; they say Omicron
Lies in wait right outside, like a fearsome beast, bloody maw gaping!
Yes indeed, none of us can go outside, all of us;
We must obey like good little children, all of us;
We must heed the orders at all times, all of us (in Newspeak: “all without exception”)
Must stand in long lines for COVID tests, or wait for the Big Whites[vii] to come do them on the doorstep,
And one time an “antigen test” in the middle of the night, like some kind of rigged game…
Ah, humans––to survive we need a big bag of tricks and a lot of luck
At best we have the vague sense that some abysses were dug out in the deep night long ago
That’s right, we must receive with both hands the gift of Lianhua Qingwen pills,[viii]
We must shed tears of gratitude, and thrice call out Long Live the Emperor…
But I don’t care about the epidemic right now, I’m sunk in the epidemic of separation and death!
Ah, my Ama, this path you took to leave me, to leave the house you
Built all those years ago, was not a long one,
Now I walk it again and again as I perform my thrice daily sur offerings,
Reciting om mani padme hum as I go, loud, like I’m yelling it,
As if the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara will be moved and take pity on one who’s lost her mother…
And I look up, and a wisp of cloud drifts across the deep, azure sky,
And then I don’t hear anything anymore: the incessant wailing
Of the ambulances, the three crisp rings of the vajra bell, the resounding salvation of the Karmapa’s voice, and these prayers of mine, day after day, night after night… I, oh––
I don’t hear a thing, just the last sigh of the mother who carried and raised me:
“Too late, it’s too late now…”
Lhasa, September 12th, 2022; revised on the 15th, and again on the 28th.
Notes
[i] གསུར། a type of smoke offering for those who have passed into the bardo. Traditionally, it is made with special medicinal powders and the “three whites and three sweets” (butter, milk, and yoghurt; crystal sugar, brown sugar, and honey), all mixed together with tsampa. When roasted, the fragrant smoke it gives off acts as a kind of nourishment that is offered to the departed consciousnesses of close relatives.
[ii] A memoir by the Israeli author Amos Oz (1939-2018).
[iii] Traditionally, this ritual is performed by burning cow dung in a clay pot and sprinkling the sur on top, an offering to the deceased to be used for forty-nine days.
[iv] Fangcang is the Chinese word for a portable cabin, referring here to the temporary buildings set up to quarantine COVID patients. When I was revising this poem, I discovered that eight or nine was far too low an estimate: there are some twenty-odd of these makeshift hospitals in Lhasa––perhaps even more. They have also spread into Meldro Gungkar and other neighboring counties. What’s more, ambulances aren’t the only vehicles taking people away to the fangcang when they test positive (or even negative) for COVID: public buses are yet more common. Because they often come to take people away in the middle of the night, city residents have dubbed them “Lhasa’s Midnight Buses”––a black humor horror movie title. According to a report from the bus company, 349,000 people had been transferred in this way as of September 23rd, and Lhasa only has a population of just over 800,000.
[v] In Tibetan, pigsty is pronounced paktsang, while a beggar’s hovel is a trangtsang––both sound similar to the Chinese fangcang.
[vi] པང་གདན། the apron worn over a Tibetan woman’s dress.
[vii] Another “Newspeak” term coined in China referring to COVID prevention personnel, so-called because of their white protective suits.
[viii] A type of traditional Chinese herbal medicine, originally developed in China to combat SARS. It is recommended by the National Health Commission of the PRC as a treatment for COVID-19.
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