စိတ်ထဲရှိသမျှ

Shared below is the “Denken a den Freund bei Nacht” by Hermann Hesse (Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin, 1953), written back in September 1914. Today I'd like to dedicate this peom in honour of my friend’s memory, who passed away two years ago today, as it resonates with themes of friendship, longing, and the sorrow of parting. I have also shared the English translation by James Wright (Jonathan Cape, London, 1977), for those of us who do not speak German. Denken an den Freund bei Nacht Früh kommt in diesembösen Jahr der Herbst. Ich geh bei Nacht im Feld,

Portrait Bernard Noël- 1930 où est la lettre? cette question vient d’un mourant puis il se tait tant qu’un homme vit il n’a pas besoin de compter sa langue quand un homme meurt il doit rendre son alphabet de chaque mort nous attendons le secret de la vie le dernier souffle emporte la lettre manquante elle s’envole derrière le visage elle se cache au milieu du nom

Walking in the pitch black, with each step taken cautiously, unsure of the path ahead. Shadows play tricks on the senses, amplifying the feeling of uncertainty. The absence of light obscures landmarks, leaving one to navigate through the darkness, relying on instinct and perseverance. In this challenging situation, it becomes an exploration of trust, both in oneself and in the unseen possibilities that lie beyond the shadows. It is in these moments that the true strength of the human spirit is tested, as one finds resilience and the determination to forge ahead, even when the destination remains unknown.

Dear Lilly, I do not know what I will say in this letter. Maybe I won't say anything. I am very depressed. All I want to do is sleep or cry and the only thing that keeps me from giving in is that more than anything. So instead of sleeping my day away, I write. Poems, stray thoughts in my journal, and, of course, letters. Sometimes I mail them, like this one to you, and sometimes they are just letters to myself. Sometimes it’s stuff that I don't even know I am going to write like it's coming from someone else's mind but it's in my handwriting.

စိတ်ကူးချိုချိုမှာ ခင်ဖုန်းသက်ဝေကို ဂလယ်ရီ အလည်လိုက်ဖို့ ဝင်ရှာခဲ့သေးတယ်။ အရောင်းစာရေး ညီမလေးက စကားချိုချိုနဲ့ ပြန်ပြောတယ် ကုန်နေပါတယ်ရှင်တဲ့။ စိတ်ပျက်ပျက်နဲ့ စံရိပ်ငြီမ်မှာ မာလာရှမ်းကော သွားစားကြတော့ မိုက်ကီက မေးတယ် မင့်တီ အဆင်ပြေလားတဲ့။ မိုးထဲ၊ လေထဲ ကားသံ၊ ခိုသံ ကြားမှာ ကျနော် ညည်းတွား နေတာကော ကြားရဲ့လား ခင်ဖုန်သက်ဝေ။ ၃၇လမ်းက အဟောင်းဆိုင်တွေလဲ ရောက်ခဲ့သေးတယ်။ ခင်များကို ကျနော် မတွေ့ဘူးဗျာ။ ကျနော်ကလည်း ကျနော်ပဲ ခင်များ မရှိတော့မှာ ခင်များကို အသည်းအသန် လိုက်ရှာနေမီတယ်။ ဘယ်တော့

A decade ago, I came across a poem online. While I don't recall all of it, the following two lines have remained in my mind: "the furthest distance in the world is not between life and death…." and "yet you don't know that I love you." Today for no particular reason, I decided to Google it, but surprise, surprise all I discovered was that the poet was Tagore. My recently profound interests in Myanmar poetries has educated me that his works are widely appreciated in Myanmar's poetry circles, with many translations of his poems into Myanmar languages (တဂိုး၏ ကဗျာများ).

နွေရာသီ ကျောင်းပိတ်ရက်ရှည်တစ်နေ့မှာ အဖွားဆီကို အလည်အပတ် သွားတော့ ဆရာမကြည်အေးရဲ့ စာအုပ်တစ်အုပ်ကို သူ့ရဲ့ home library ၊ bookshelf မှာတွေ့ခဲ့တယ်။ “ဖုန်းသက်တိုင်” လား၊ “ကေဖွဲ့ဆိုသီ” လား ကျနော် သေသေချာချာ မမှတ်မိတော့ပါ။ ဒါပေမယ့် “ဖူးငုံပွင့်သစ်” ဆိုတဲ့ စကားစု ကို ကျနော် မှတ်မိနေသေးတယ်။  အဲ့အချိန် တုန်းက မြန်မာစာ ဖတ်လေ့၊ ဖတ်ထ (habit) မရှိတော့ ဟိုလှန်ဒီလှန် flipped through

It was one of those lazy summer days in late May. Shali and I happened to visit a bookstore in Junction Square mall with zero intention of going there in the first place.  We were perhaps doing it out of boredom and despair following the unfortunate disappearance of our friend.  I was lazily browsing some books, I don’t recall now, but she was frantically looking for something else.   When I got bored browsing the books, I told her that it was time we left the place, and as we were about to, she quickly disappeared

You have been mine before,—  How long ago I may not know: These are the two lines I like the most of Rossetti's Sudden Light.  Is love really worth the pain? One can arguably say that to let go of someone does not mean you have to stop loving that person. But can you really live the rest your life with full