A Letter for Lovers and Haters

38 | World Literature Today A Letter for Lovers and Haters Ma Ei I don’t want to join the troupe of TheEightyThousandHermits I don’t wish to audition for The Ninety Thousand Sheldrakes Is there anything worth the price of nostalgia For every time I walk the beaten path? Once . . . Once . . . Once . . . It tires me to pine . . . To pine for the past. How extraordinary mother and father are! Not a single fight, Pacified by love for over sixty years. I may be my mother’s daughter, but I don’t always want to meet Lord and Lady Muck’s, I don’t always want to keep up appearances, I swallow a self-concocted medicine On the famine road of metta. I’ve a single yen as a woman poet, Life hasn’t afforded me anything yet. It’s my right to live within myself, prideful I can conjure a spit-stain into an illicit bus “Take it easy, sir . . . drop me off at the corner shop.” In times of urgency and emergency Obnoxious is the bloke who wants to appear On the list of “10 Wholesome Friends.” It seems there are personal grudges Not only backstabbings, Taking out the bones reveals character, The bark tells you the type of tree. I’ll never play a leading role, I’m no good at acting the drama queen No good at soliloquies or loose-lipped laughter No good at hating and hatred Crocodile tears are rare for me I’ve always been indiscreet, Are all these things my faults? She is wanton . . . she is bold . . . So say the sisters of the same fold. She beguiles . . . she carries burdens heavier than herself So say the brothers of a different fold. In this life I can do what I want, Everyone will remain jealous Even shrouded in my wounds How many times one has to die. Before I’m an old lady with a crooked spine I might go to a meditation center . . . I might not . . . I might behave . . . I might not . . . I might “get on” with whomever I meet . . . I might not My corpse might look pretty . . . it might not I might move the trove of my poems into cyberspace Or make an appointment with the grim reaper . . . In practice I forget my age, I wage wars for a world that is worth living in I harrow this soiled and sodden field of life I sow the seeds of dukkha Until my bones fall apart. Translation from the Burmese By ko ko thett & James Byrne Ma Ei is from Burma delta. Her poem “A Letter for Lovers and Haters” won a national award for the best poem in 2009. Ma Ei has published more than two hundred poems, about a hundred short stories, a hundred articles, and A Freight of Roses, a novel. She was an editor for New Age magazine and the journal Torch

Aesthetics · Art · Brother · Daughter · Drama · Hatred · Literature · Sociology · History · Law · Themes in Literature Analysis