"Kibber is the highest elevation permanent village in India. It is located in Himachal Pradesh, in the Himalayas. Because of its proximity to China, a special inner line permit is needed to travel there and for a four-wheel drive for the hardscrabble roads, which are indeed only passable from late spring to late summer.
This poem brings out music of beast and farmer depending on each other in crisp air. I am also going to bring a personal note on how this poem moved me. Instead of hearing a collaboration of vibrating glass bowls in a Ben Franklin’s glass armonica–crystalline, I hear singing bowls’ hums and my body absorbing energy balancing vibrations the Himalayas’ valleys and soil release. That is only because I like singing bowls and I have a few."
Above Kibber
The path that curves along the folds
of the village is unpaved
and unravels upslope beside a cairn
heaped with yak horns
in nubbly rust colored loops.
No tree line obscures our view
of a cluster of whitewashed houses
their windows rimmed with black trapezoids
to absorb sunlight, their flat roofs
overlapped at the edge with dried brush
that wicks off snow to prevent roof collapse.
I don't know how much snow, exactly,
it being mid-July
but I’m told the road is closed
October through May and tongues of
two glaciers lap the switch back approach.
Below a family in a terraced field,
the wife and three children stoop
behind the farmer, who guides
his yoked yaks beside him.
Only now, plowing and sowing.
I begin to connect a distant singing voice
to the farmer by the coincidence of his notes
with the movement of the beasts.
Forward, backward, turn, pause, churn.
The voice is not commanding - but guiding -
a love song. Pure, ringing into the wind,
it reminds me of my favorite sound
in all the world, Ben Franklin’s glass armonica -
crystalline vibration in rare atmosphere.
And listening acutely,
not echo, but antiphon
in folds of the valley obscured
more voices elevate in resonance
with spring planting and snow capped peaks.
