The Wound - Khet Mar

What a surprise!
The most cheerful tiding hit me
In the most cheerless hour of life.

Fly On O Crane! - Maung Swan Yi

Out from Hiroshima’s flames

thou hast winged, O Crane!

The Collapse of Power - Saw Wai

under this sha-manic sky

with its favourable spirits and forks of lightning

why do unknown numbers

dance into obscurity?

Armstrong! oh Armstrong!

are there multi-coloured cauldrons

in the centre of your iris?

how sublime your iris!

truly 

in this most totemic of pressure-cookers

there is: 

 no Thomas Edison

 no Kanaung prince

 no Thein Pe Myint

 no Jack London

 no Vincent Van Gogh

 no Paw Oo Thet

 no Saya Zawgyi

 no Rabindranath Tagore

 no John Lennon

 no Myoma Nyein

 no collegian Ne Win

 no Robert Redford

 no Harold Robbins

 no Ahtoutthaw Hla Aung

 no Thakhin Aung San

 no nothing is there

 no nothing 

 no 

 everything

look!

(in the cauldron of dreamtime)

how these bubbling mists

of a jungle imagination

are demented and embellished

by the red of

first light

---

Saw Wai [U Saw Wei] (20th century) Myanmar

Translated by Niall McDevitt.

Source: National Poetry Library (From The Wolf No 17 (Spring 2008))

Yangon 2010 - Maung Yu Py

Parents and guardians jostle over the quality of education available to their children, it’s been observed.

Harbour - Maung Chaw Nwe

They will land here.
A tree or two or three.
A ship or two or three.
Sceneries will land.
Fortuities will land.

February 14th - Saw Wai

Arensberg said:
Only once you have experienced deep pain
And madness
And like an adolescent
Thought the blurred photo of a model
Great art
Can you call it heartbreak.