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SEVEN POEMS
Translations from the THAI
Contest:
Lady Sri Chulalak and the Poet
(Sri Prat)
From
Lines Written Near the Statue
of the Buddha of Prathom
(Sunthorn Poo)
From
The Epic Of
Excellency Lor
(Anon)
Little
Star
(Sujit Wongtes)
Lost
Bananas
(Wat Wanlayangkoon)
Pat
(Surasak Sriprapan)
Poor
Prince Lun-Dai
(Phra Maha Montree Sub)
From
THE EPIC OF EXCELLENCY LOR
Anonymous
(between 1445 and 1546)
‘A
happily married prince is bewitched and falls in love with the two
daughters of a neighbouring ruler with whom he is at war. The death of
the lovers leads to the reconciliation of the states.’ —Keith
Bosley
See
three make love who high have reigned:
arms
that hold flesh, the body strained
to
press close and admire,
desire,
enjoy, raise lips to feed
on
crowded tastes of heavenly mead—
thus
one pair squeeze and clutch.
Arms
hug, arms cling, support, caress;
flesh,
divine flesh, importunes flesh
and
soft young flesh is pleased.
Each
visage easeful, bright with youth:
mouth,
divine mouth, importunes mouth,
mouths
for each other made.
Male
breast to maiden breast is joined;
loins,
divine loins, importune loins,
soft
coupling loins that melt.
Oh
joy so felt, to newly mate,
oh
blended tastes’ and odours’ weight
both
mortal lusts devour.
The
flower bloats and strains to open,
blossom
on blossom crowds on blossom:
a
blossom-clustered pond.
Lo,
the bee’s fondle, clutch and squeeze
amidst
the lotus’ rise and tease;
incessant,
they each probe.
Derobed
for heaven’s pool is not
half
such a brave, delightful sport
as
for her smooth-fleshed pool.
‘Thy
darling pool gives so much joy
for
the fish to wallow in, jump, toy:
thy
lotus, open wide.
The
pretty side, swept clean and bare
of
dust, round thy sweet watery lair!
Incomparable
mound!’
‘My
lord has found his karma’s best
lets
him play with my golden breasts.
Caress
me, I implore.’
When
Lady Peun the king had cloyed
he
then the other nymph enjoyed,
the
noble maid Pang Tong.
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
CONTEST:
LADY SRI CHULALAK AND THE POET
Sri
Prat (1655 - 1688)
Concubine:
Poor
hare jumps at moon? Dotes so!
Does
not see how low his place.
Like
peacocks who’d know the clouds
Does
not see one ace his place,
the
rogue.
Poet:
Poor
hare dotes, jumps at high glow—
As
far as eyes go in sky.
But
at times hearts flow: then all beasts mate.
Queen,
do not berate. My case fits you!
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
From
LINES WRITTEN NEAR THE STATUE
OF THE BUDDHA OF PRATHOM
Sunthorn
Poo (1786 - 1855)
Be
thou a tree, then let me on thee settle;
Let
me brood on a branch, bide in the thick.
Be
thou a lunar beauty, Passion Petal,
I
beg I, as the hero, fly to pick.
Be
thou the lotus, let me be the bee,
To
court and suck and make much of thy pollen.
Be
thou the water, let me dragon be
That
I praise and enjoy, once in thee fallen.
Be
thou the cooling cave, then, swan of thine,
I’ll
swirl and dwell and enter in a flood.
Be
thou, oh coolest flesh, in fact divine,
Then
let me, charmed by thee, be as a god.
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
POOR
PRINCE LUN-DAI
Phra
Maha Montree Sub (1809 – 51)
So
let the tale begin. Poor Prince Lun-Dai
alone
enjoys his throne, alone goes by—
wandering
on tour—that downtown mark, the Swing
before
the Brahmin temple; lives in the wing
of
Broken Castle whose thin pilasters
are
snapped off near the top, where spiky furze
tangles
the walls which might have been of glass.
The
foe, intending evil, cannot pass,
for
night and day a mongrel howls and waits.
On
tour he plays a pipe at all the gates
to
get rice for his granary and gut.
No
one dislikes him, neither man nor slut:
they
aim to serve; his karma is their fear.
And
then at evening, when the shadows near,
mosquitoes
congregate. The Prince Lun-Dai
makes
smoke so he can enter, and can lie
not
on a bed of crystal but of reed,
kingly,
lethargic, stoned on ganja weed.
Next,
when the sun comes up and starts its race
Lun-Dai
bends to a pan to splash his face,
disrupts
his fast with fish-skins and dry dahl
and
then completes his bath—in the canal.
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
LITTLE
STAR
Sujit
Wongtes
(1973)
Twinkle
twinkle
little
star
Through
the seven kinds of palm-tree
Jow
Km-thong went out
to
live the life of a robber
and
has not turned about.
Their
rice wrapped in a leaf
his
parents hear it said
everywhere
they punt in search
that
Jow Km-thong is dead.
From
a car they hear, from a train,
a
cawing, gnawing and jawing,
calling
Km-thong by name.
You
left home at sunrise
—you
told your brother and sis—
for
rights, dignity, freedom,
as
Garibaldi did.
how
I wonder
what
you are
With
his folk-weave shoulder bag
Km-thong
left his veranda,
his
moony books blotched with tears,
he
had wept that night in anger.
Jow
Km-thong, you were weeping
in
the house until very late;
your
campus flag, blood-soaked,
swam
in the Chao-phrya’s spate.
up
above the sky so high
like
a diamond in the sky
Your
mother is calling, Km-thong.
Feel
what she must have felt.
Your
father is waiting: you are no fighter
covered
in wounds and welts.
Your
body is weak and thin,
bred
to soft study from birth.
Your
mother knows you are loyal.
Dad
knows that you thank the earth.
But
who else will know your belief?
They
have not Indra’s mind.
Men
may be able to hear
but
authority makes them blind.
You
went the way you were set in;
your
parents waited at home.
The
morning Glory opens.
Evening
Pride gleams in the gloam.
Your
parents stray to the tablets
where
democracy is averred.
There
is no trace of Jow Km-thong,
just
their grief, their pride, and his word.
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
PAT
Surasak
Sriprapan
(1968)
Young
Pat’s a north-east peasant, from Esan,
who
since a child has worked hard, soaked in sweat;
and
as, since he was small, his Dad’s been dead,
young
Pat’s lived rough and now he’s hard as nails.
The
sort of lad whose learning’s basic, Pat
has
lived up in the village, skint and maimed.
No
dream and no full stomach and no brains—
less,
need you ask, than a dirt farmer’s son.
In
the midst of scrape and scrounge he’s been a man.
Life’s
wiped the weak smile from his frigid face.
And
he’s grown smaller still in that wide place
since
once he raised his eyes and stared at—what?
In
the body politic, corrupt, decayed,
Pat
shrinks his scaly body, ducks and shakes;
lives
on the red land and its sun-dried flakes
that
have for him meant one thing always—tears.
His
tears sweat down and sparkle in the sun
and
then dry up—there’s nothing they can earn.
And
so the brain of this field roughneck burns
and
throbs with a black skyline of its own.
The
no-choice of this skyline drives his mind
to
leave this land’s stretch which is breaking him.
The
world’s chaotic and its wars are grim.
Pat,
angry, sings his liberation song.
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
LOST
BANANAS
Wat
Wanlayangkoon
(1975)
My
house is in a lane:
‘Lane
of Bananas’.
Near
me lives a monkey.
Monkey
likes bananas.
But
monkey lives on lawn
where
grow no bananas.
Before
I sleep each night
I
gorge on bananas.
I
have money to spend:
spend
it on bananas.
Thus
I buy and put by
bunches
of bananas.
Each
day I go to work:
am
paid in bananas.
I
came home one evening
and
saw no bananas.
Eyes
blurred, stomach empty,
I
looked for bananas.
I
searched, saw a monkey
holding
my bananas.
Was
angry with monkey,
kicked
him, took bananas.
Was
angry but I found
just
skins of bananas.
Then
I learnt the monkey did
not
eat my bananas.
Neighbours
had seen a man
stealing
my bananas.
He
was a dirt digger
who
disliked bananas
but
had a child who ate
rice
ground with bananas.
He
was a poor man, he
could
not buy bananas.
His
child was so hungry
he
stole my bananas.
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
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