"Artificial Weather Machine" by Maung Sein Win (Padigon)

Illustration for "Artificial Weather Machine" by Kenneth Wong

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and the weather always nicer in another part of the world. With gray skies, barren trees, and plummeting temperatures, winter landscape often evokes melancholy and despair in western poetry. For a Burmese poet, the same setting may seem like heaven. To Maung Sein Win, it is refuge from the Asian sun's perpetual heat and monsoon's drowning downpours.

The real Siberia was, during the Soviet Union's peak, home to the Gulag labor camps, designed to break down and bring slow, forgotten death to political exiles. But the Burmese poet sees Siberia as a mythical place, a powdery, dry, white region far from Burma's dirty, humid tropical torture. The kiss of the snowflakes, the silvery sheen of the frozen lakes, and the powdered treetops are part of Maung Sein Win's visual language to depict winter as an unlikely luxury for his countrymen -- a luxury that proves deadly for the poor and the disenfranchised.

The neighborhoods referenced in the poem are noteworthy for the difference in their characters. On one end are the communities of Inya Road, Tekkatho Yeiktha, and Windermere, flanked by manicured lawns, lakefront views, and guard houses. (Tekkatho Yeiktha literally means "The University's Shelter"; Windermere remains faithful to the colonial air of exclusivity in its current makeup of residents.)  On the opposite end are Thaketa and Dala, historically associated with working class folks. Though not quite accurate, the names themselves often conjure up visions of slums and shantytowns.

The poem appears in the anthology titled Daung Phan Dae Pwe (Peacock Hunt), Union Publishing House, August 2015, but its composition date may be much earlier. The automotive brands listed -- Datsun, Toyota, Sprinter, Galant -- were once symbols of affluence (circa 1980s); they're now clearly outdated, even for a country that's trying to make up for lost times.

Maung Sein Win is better known as Maung Sein Win (Padigon), after the village of Padigon where the poet was born.

"Artificial Weather Machine" or "Climate Control"

Not for me are summer and rainy weather,

But winter I cherish; so I invented

A machine that controls climate

To dust all three seasons in snow,

To chill in a perpetual mist.

 

I hold Nature’s rein,

And can remake all three seasons

In winter’s image, all wrapped in snow,

At the push of a button.

Then …

The artificial winter

Shall freeze the creeks and rivers

Into patches of ice, like Siberia, Russia;

Or the snowy highways

Of Moscow in October,

Graced with stems of dripping snow.

Adipadi Road, sprinkled in wet snow,

And the sky damp, thick, and overcast.

Look over there by Judson Road,

Where a row of trees wears

Wreaths and rings of snow:

Galants, Sprinters, Toyotas, Datsuns,

Coated in snowflakes,

Crisscross in the winter morn—

What a blessed sight!

Inya Lake is a sheet of snow,

A fashionable pastime;

We skate, we sip a mix of wines;

We toast in tipsy delight

To ring in the new season.

Look, look!

By Inya Lake, along Tekkatho Yeiktha,

In Windermere, in the mist,

With furry caps and long coats,

Layered in velvet and corduroy,

People stroll in satisfaction.

Now, at last, our city

Can be on par with Europe,

People laughing, greeting,

Singing the morning’s praises—

Thank you, Mr. Engineer!

Then I leave behind Inya,

Tekkatho Yeiktha,

And Windermere’s confines

To venture out to the city’s outskirts,

To the rural north and south.

A crumbling old hut

Can’t keep out the snow,

Now lies beneath blocks of powder;

The streets are devoid of people—

An eerie winter morning.

On the main road with lumps of ice,

Sleeps a dog in skin and bones,

Bloodless, drenched, frozen in death.

In the shantytown,

Among the coatless poor,

I hear quivering jawbones, chattering teeth;

The groans and whimpers from pale, blue lips

Suddenly reach my ears.

On the way back,

I deliberate …

Do I destroy the climate machine?

Or keep it up and running?

Do I … Do I … Do I …

In the end, ambivalent thoughts

Lead to …

I, the innovator,

The engineer,

Do not live

In Thaketa and Dala;

I live

In Tekkatho Yeiktha,

Dressed in gold and silver;

So hail to my creation,

My artificial weather machine—

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! 

Maung Sein Win (Padigon)

Translated by Kenneth Wong, May 2016

Click on the thumbnails below for the original Burmese text.