My mind roams by day;
I cannot sleep at night.
Daily affairs have no end;
Fatigue is my only friend.
~Tsangyang Gyatso (The Sixth Dalai Lama)
*untitled poem translated by G.W. Houston in Wings of The White Crane:
Poems of Tshangs dbyangs rgya mtsho (1683-1706). Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass, 1967.
A very different (and I think better) translation of the same poem done by Paul Williams =
“So out of my mind with love,
I lose my sleep at night.
Can’t touch her while it’s day–
Frustration’s my sole friend.”
Found in ‘Songs of Love, Poems of Sadness: The Erotic Verse of the Sixth Dalai Lama’. London: I.B. Tauris, 2004