"First Love" and "Fallen Flowers Fit for Kings," Two Poems by Maung Sein Win (Padigon)

Girl with Thanakha, by K. Wong

Maung Sein Win (Padigon) belongs to the romantic Burmese poetry tradition that harkens back to the courtiers and courtesans from the Golden Ages of Pyinya and Inwa (spanning across the 14th and 15th centuries). In most of his poems, he uses the classic rhyme schemes that require intricate alignment of words with complementary vowel sounds -- an effect that's impossible to reproduce in the translated versions but can be heard in the recorded Burmese recital below.

From time to time, he dashes off poems inspired by contemporary events. Such is the case with his poem called "The Curse of Let Padaung," which laments the local authorities' use excessive force that resulted in the death of an unarmed protester at the site of the controversial Let Padaung copper mine project. But he's best known for his love poems. In them, the noble lover reveals his secret longings, cherishes the bitter-sweet past, and embraces the pangs of unrequited love as the hallmark of true devotion. 

First Love

By Maung Sein Win
Translated by Kenneth Wong

Because it only blooms
Once in a life,
On a single stem,
As a single bud,
Whether from a broken branch
Or from a sudden fall,
If it should rest on the ground,
I will pick up gently
And cherish the dried flower.

Fallen Flowers Fit for Kings


By Maung Sein Win
Translated by Kenneth Wong 

It’s the flowers’ nature
To bloom
Blossom
Wilt
And fall.
Not the regal orchid
Sprouting from a high branch tip,
But the fallen ones still want to grace
The great halls of the palace.
Sweet-scented in full blossom,
Still as sweet while falling down,
Still as sweet wilted and brown.
The star flowers dropped by a gust,
I picked and strung them into a wreath
To crown a head or a sacred shrine—
Not quite the princes of the flowering bunch,
But I’ll treasure them just the same.