Poetry
ဗေဒါလမ်း
Not translated into English
Zawgyi · 1963
Synopsis
Ma Beda, a water hyacinth, drifts away on a waterway of the delta and goes down towards lower Burma. The poems follow her with the rhythm of the tides, then give her a voice: she faces fatigue, whirlpools and the tree trunks that bar the current, passes the villages on the banks and never gives up, wearing her flower like a crown of endurance. Her journey becomes that of a whole life, with its ups and downs.
Context
The pieces of the suite first appeared separately in a review, from 1957 to 1981 according to John Charles Ryan; the literary association of the capital's students collected a volume of them in November 1963. The poet says he searched for several weeks for the word he coined for the last stanza, which later reprints have altered. The suite carries a philosophy of patient endurance and a Buddhist view of being; Ryan also reads in it a precise knowledge of rivers and tides.
Who it is for
Short poems in Burmese, 41 pages in the 1963 edition; no French translation.
Prizes and reception
The best-known sequence of its author, whom Burma honours as a national poet and a philosopher poet.
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