"Who Will Be Gone, I Wonder" by Moe Way

Burmese girl with cellphone (Shutterstock)

Burmese poet Moe Way was born in the village of Yar Thar Gyi in the Irrawaddy Delta region. He published his first solo poetry collection, titled "The Length of a Strand of Hair," in 1994. His poems are part of the bilingual (English-Burmese) anthology Bones Will Crow (edited and translated by Ko Ko Thett and James Byrne, Arc Publications, 2012). 

Moe Way cofounded The Eras Publishing House in 2001, while the country was still under military rule. The publishing house wanted to devote itself solely to poetry, but the draconian censorship rules of the Literary Scrutiny Board made this approach impractical. So it published other genres to survive. Today, The Eras is recognized as a champion of modern Burmese poetry. Since its inception, it has published a total of 120 books, half of which are poetry collections and poetry-related literature.

"Who will be gone, I wonder," was first published  in Idea magazine in July 2016. The poem won Moe Way the 2016 Anauk Myaut Lwin Byin (North Western Meadow) Poetry Award in Monywa. (The original Burmese text to the poem is available here. The English translation below includes a couple of lines that are slightly different from that version because Moe Way subsequently made a number of revisions and corrections to the poem.) 

WHO WILL BE GONE, I WONDER

By Moe Way

Without proof or witness, we became human;

Holding on to an evening,

We became tainted by its darkness.

It’s only a digital surface, but still easily stained with colors.

Because the northern wind

Blowing through the streets of Yangon

Between walls and windows

Historically feels stuffy,

People floats right into heaven

From wherever they happen to be sitting,

Leaving behind an empty spot.

Almost a lifetime on the street,

Fumbling, stumbling, looking stupefied ...

Feeling unfulfilled?

You might chew a betel quid,

Then, as dictated by History,

Spit out the juice—Ptuh!

Or you might wander down Bar Street—

The moon will still come out

If you take that route.

Here,

A plate of noodle salad rests its chin on the street;

A pot of plain tea is about to fall into a sewer.

A red table, a rickety umbrella, spots of betel juice stains ...

History is like the sparkling red mosaic

Seen through a kaleidoscope.

Women are laughing, kids are waiting tables,

Crows perching on a broken eight-foot satellite dish,

Polishing their beaks in the wind.

The streets are too congested to drive,

Yet, on the phone,

People manage to get to their destination time after time.

When morning breaks,

We’ll learn that so-and-so is no longer with us

From a story fragment flashing

On a digit, digit, digital surface.

Published in Idea magazine, July 2016

Translated by Kenneth Wong, January 2017