Miloš Lindro
Poet and literary scholar, Macedonia
   
Just as Mongolia’s broad and wild steppe, and its mountains, with their spiritual power, are eternal, so the long-song is eternally echoing in the melodies of the horsehead fiddle. The poems of G.Mend-Ooyo have begun to resound in our own Macedonian language with just such a melody. In his brief introduction, Mend-Ooyo speaks of how, deep in his heart, and from a very early age, he has been protecting the long-song. The imagination of the nomadic people, their traditional songs and the music of the horsehead fiddle are continually imprinted in his heart. The nomadic tradition of höömei, or overtone singing, is such a tradition that Mend-Ooyo celebrates in his melodic poetry, casting out rough waves which clearly express the wisdom of the Mongolian people.
Since the mediaeval period, when westerners first discovered the lifestyle of Mongolian nomads, their customs, and their way of understanding their world, they have regarded it as an amazing intellectual treasure in the history of civilization. And this fine contemporary poet is showing such things through his work.
Dr Rosemary Wilkinson, President of the World Academy of Arts and Culture, has said of Mend-Ooyo’s poetry that it is “the power of his people’s wisdom, and his language reveals their ability to imagine.” What I understand this to mean is that Mend-Ooyo’s poetry has a particular focus, and undertakes the special work of expressing and safeguarding the mind of his people. His valuable contribution to Mongolian culture, and especially to its literature, extends from his own region and influences the ideas of people throughout the world. It is the mind of the Mongolian people which this poet offers to us in the west to drink through the works of his heart.
After looking through the poems collected in this volume, we feel that we are now familiar with the world of education. We have been rewarded with poetry of a brand new melody. Right from the first, we smell the scent of flowers across the broad Mongolian steppe, and we see before our eyes the imposing outlines of mountains. As we read on, we sense the biting chill out on the steppe, the whistling wind, the gentle swirling of snow. We are pleased to see the sun rising with a reddish glow from the bright threshold of the warm and fragrant ger. At evening, we are happy to shed the weariness from our day of work, to watch the setting sun on its way, its yellow rays glittering.
Such unrepeatable moments of life are a means by which the poet draws closer to the hearts of readers through imagery, rhythm, scent, and intimacy, a music by which Heaven offers support. The power of nature in the broad, wild steppe is absorbed by a Mongolian nomad from the moment when they are born into the world of flesh and blood - without it, they cannot live. Nomadic herders in Mongolia become an inextricable part of the broad steppe, it is firmly rooted in their wisdom. As I read Mend-Ooyo’s poems, I receive a powerful impression, as a literary critic, that this is “pantheism.” But this word alone is insufficient to convey the force of this impression.
To reflect on philosophy and literary research allows us to express the profound and immeasurable contents of these poems, which celebrate the wisdom of a single man and his people, together with the native land of this particular poet. I’ll quote here from the poem of Mend-Ooyo which left me with the impression I mentioned before:
 
In our Mongolian melodies I remain with my sadness,
and ever morning I’ll wake, relaxing in the melody of the horsehead fiddle.
I am in the flint which guards the fire in a Mongol home,
and I’ll shine in every rumbling of a horse’s hooves.
 
The power of nature in the land of his native Dariganga lives eternally in Mend-Ooyo’s thought, and this seen frequently in his poetry. In “Letters from the Wild Steppe,” the central idea, the rich thought in many layers of meaning, is of this inexhaustible power, witnessed in the works of this eternally youthful poet, and which all the more clearly reveals the lineage of this ancient and wonderful people, the eternal and deathless Mongolians.
The poems in this volume are expressed through soft and gentle melodies and, as Mend-Ooyo says in his introduction, this “gentle melody” is a meeting with peaceful and philosophical poetry. He writes of how, from a very young age, he felt himself compelled him to find the deathless and eternal spirituality. When his father played the horsehead fiddle and sang, the stories which Mend-Ooyo heard and felt remained to this child of the countryside, an legacy of cultural wisdom which he could never forget. When he came to make his own work, his homeland granted him a kind of magical ability, by which “the mountains grew more blue, the waters and springs were made clearer, and the birdsong sweeter.” As he wrote in his poem “The Way of the World,”
 
We ride our horses in the light of dawn,
we dismount at the tethering post with the magpies at evening.
 
The thundering of hooves to which his ears became accustomed lodged in his youthful heart. This inexpressible thundering of hooves guided his intuition across the boundless wilderness of the steppe. In his poem “Horse Hour,” the thundering hooves are heard all around, “on Horseman’s Hill,” “in the horse pastures,” and “in the dust of their hooves.” The divine presence which comes from the time of the ancestors, the customs which honor the queenly Mother Earth, the rituals which treasure every living being, whether they have awareness or not - all of these have since ancient times been pulsing in the veins of this world, and which this poet’s work clearly expresses.
He writes, “I trust more and more what comes from the blue Heaven.” Every time his creative desire poured forth, the excitement in his heart softened his melody, and it was as though some kind of spiritual protector was watching over the verses of his gently-flowing poetry. The boundless space of the steppe and the Gobi is the source of the creative spirit, and at the most precious central point of the earth is the nomadic Mongol ger. Wherever there is a site for an encampment, there is a square area, and there the nomadic Mongol ger is connected vertically through the roof-ring with the sky above. As the poet himself says,
 
We have tea together, and the snow falls through the roof-ring.
 
In the Mongolian ger, as in the starry sky, the community of nomads sit around the fire, taking into their hands through the roof-ring the rays of the golden sun.
Mongolian herders cross mountains and ford rivers at midnight, but they never get lost. The many stars in the night sky, especially the Pole Star and the Plough, are always friends who show them the way, and such it has been for centuries. In Mend-Ooyo’s work, the boundless world comes into clear focus as the pulsing at the poems’ heart. The experience of life absorbs his mind into the mind of the world. The subject of the broad and horizonless land is enriched by “a deathless eternity,” and suitably extends into his work.
This son of eternity has struck a note of credibility in his poem “The Swallows,” where in fact this deathless eternity does not allow people to continue forever. From his youth as the child of a nomadic herding family, Mend-Ooyo grew up, dealing with the difficulties of life. The knowledge of such experiences shaped his youthful wisdom and provided the gentle melody and philosophical perspective of his work. The experiences through which he understood the boundless wisdom of the human mind has come to us as the nourishment of ideas (their form, rhythm, music) in his poetry. The brightness, the music, the warmth of the day, the cold of the night - from all of these, the crystalline shards of song come together, and are formed into a deep philosophical wisdom.
In Mend-Ooyo’s poetry, external and internal meaning and rhythm are brought together in a melody of many colors and tones. The interweaving of such external and internal meanings finds its way into his prose poems, such as “Crystal Temple of Meaning,” “The Jade Key” and “The First Mother.” These works especially, through their poetic blend of multiple images, extend and deepen future language, sounds, intuition and meanings and open up the highest level of poetic ability.
Let me end by saying a few words about Mend-Ooyo’s book “Every Shining Moment,” to which I have also recently been introduced. After reading it, I became someone else, turning around in Mend-Ooyo’s boundless and plentiful space of poetry, dwelling in the pleasure of his timeless wisdom - in fact this poet who has made a gift of this wonderful world to us is a true Mongolian genius.