"The Street Where Love Lives" by Maung Philar

A street in downtown Rangoon (AMzPhoto / Shutterstock.com)

Translator's Note: Years ago, I became aware of someone operating a Burmese book rental shop out of her garage in a sleepy residential section of Daly City, California. She had sources that brought her regular shipments of books and movies from back home. In the pre-Internet, pre-Amazon, pre-Facebook era, hers was arguably the biggest Burmese library in the Bay Area. Naturally, all the exiled bibliophiles flocked to her garage. To make sure her unlicensed business stayed under the radar, she kept the shop strictly by appointment, and rented only to known customers. My sister, who was one of her regulars, had to vouch for my character before I was admitted. 

I was at the time a new immigrant with no prospect of going home anytime soon. I needed to feed my hungry soul with words -- words that were easily found on the sidewalks of Pansoedan Street, in the booksellers' district in Rangoon, but were hopelessly out of reach in this side of the Golden Gate Bridge. I didn't just want to read some magazines and return them; I wanted to own a few. So I convinced the shop owner to sell me a stack of old magazines, at roughly six or seven times what they would have cost me back home. I cherished them all the more because they were stained with tea and smudged with betel juice -- the personal stamps of the Burmese booksellers who previously traded them. 

I first encountered "The Street Where Love Lives" by Maung Philar in the October 95 issue of Pan Wai Thee, one of the magazines I bought from the rental shop in Daly City. Reading it, I envisioned a certain street in Yankin neighborhood. I spent many an evening there in the noodle stall under a banyan tree. The noodle in coconut soup usually got soggy while I patiently waited to steal a glimpse of my crush who lived in an apartment nearby. 

This week, while looking for pulps and papers to recycle, I rediscovered the old stack of magazines. Their pages had turned yellow and frail; but the words in them were none the worse for wear. And I found myself lost in "The Street Where Love Lives" once more. I decided to translate it because all of us have strolled down that street at one time or another. I only hope my English version retains the charm, romanticism, and simplicity of Maung Philar's original. --K. Wong

The Street Where Love Lives

Maung Philar
Pan Wai Thi magazine, October 1995

My eyes
Tripped over the street
And fell;
I kept my gaze
On the street where love lives.

The street
Stirred by
Sunlight;

The street
That stretches out
Like an international airport;

The street where
Flocks of fallen leaves
Come to land;

The street that wore
A little café
Like a brooch;

The little street
Where Van Gogh’s cypresses
Don’t grow but
Only love lives
And the flowers of longing
Flourish;

The street that
Sometimes steams up
From the humidity
Of love’s tears;

The street that
Keeps laughter and giggles
Within its fences
So their tingles
Wouldn’t spill over;

The street that’s
Rich and sweet as chocolate
In daytime,
And tipsy like wine
At night;

The street that
Hides the cuckoo’s melody
Under its yellow shirt
In summer;

The street that carries
The mud-red streams
On its shoulder
In monsoon;

The street that swallows
Clumps of snow
And is drenched from head to toe
In winter;

The street that sometimes
Unzips its blouse
To take a peek
At the moon within;

The street that sometimes
Raises a eucalyptus
To shelter
The lonely wanderer
Who arrives in the evening hour;

The street that sometimes
Is a little under the weather,
Is shriveled and twisted
Like mountain ranges;

The street with lampposts
Sticking out of its chest
Like the arrows
From the red Indians
Who ambushed it;

On the street where love lives,
On that street—

He clutched
His own heart
And crumpled it
With his own hands
Before anybody knew what has happened.

He kept his gaze
On the street where love lives.

Maung Philar
(Translated by Kenneth Wong)

The original Burmese text, as it appeared in Pan Wai Thee (Oct 95), is shown below. (Click on the thumbnail for each page for larger image.)