colours of war and other poems SIRIWORN KAEWKAN
Siriworn Kaewkan, born 1968, poet, novelist and free spirit
colours of war and other poems TRANSLATED FROM THE THAI BY MARCEL BARANG
© SIRIWORN KAEWKAN © MARCEL BARANG for the translation Internet edition 2008 | All rights reserved
Colours of war The roared eructation Of wilful destruction Has faded The Tigris chokes on Red blood Across the ocean A mother wails Before her son clad In the national flag
April 2003/Bangkok
Southern border 2004 … Dinner now ready Mother grows anxious Peers through the veil of stealthy fog Waiting… … Will the children reach home tonight? What of their father? Will he be safe? And the children’s school? And what about their teacher? … June 2004
Skin-deep beauty My soul Shivers As it senses That though you have the beauty Of a bride in the still of the night It is but a reflection of the sun 2000
Don’t sail your boat too far from shore 1 Please don’t tell the truth if you don’t want the expanse of the age-old ocean to throb Please don’t tell the truth if you don’t want dust particles in town to panic Please don’t tell the truth if you don’t want ancient mountains to shudder Please don’t tell the truth Sacred votive figures will lose their magic and the power of faith fritter away Monuments to heroes will crack and crumble Please don’t tell the truth The rough thick bark of hollow big trees will chip and fall off and smother your life under That’s right Don’t sail your boat too close to the edge of the sky 2 Please don’t tell the truth if you don’t want to be an unworthy citizen devoid of thought devoid of wisdom only waiting to do harm to the country because the footprints of your life have trod the world for too few seasons
Don’t tell the truth please don’t The pillars of stone inscriptions will fall apart and the annals of darkness interact with the light of a new century and that is harmful to the nation’s history That’s right Don’t sail your boat too close to the edge of the sky 3 Please don’t tell the truth if you still want to be a lovely tiny fluffy puppy Please don’t tell the truth Sediments in glasses of water – the drink of beloved friends – will start awake and turn it muddy and bring about blandness and insipidity Please don’t tell the truth The glasses of wine on the rulers’ dining table will turn bitter like hemlock Please don’t tell the truth if you don’t want to fall in the centre of a whirlwind of loathing Don’t tell the truth please don’t no matter how much your words blossom from deepest awareness of the dewdrops at the core of your heart So press your lips shut tight and swallow those words back That’s right
The countless seeds of the Pacific Ocean fathered the Gulf of Siam and the Gulf of Siam is the source of the Jao Phraya and this ancient river flows to the maze of mountains in the north of the country to hide itself in tree roots on that mountain range That’s right Our ancestors fled from the Altai range That’s right Don’t sail your boat too close to the edge of the sky 4 Don’t tell the truth please don’t speak That’s right Copernicus’s heliocentrism is a witless deceitful theory That’s good Don’t pay attention to Galileo’s nonsense just don’t The world is still the centre of the solar system Yes the world is the centre of the solar system which God created And beyond the radiance of our galaxy that’s where God dwells That’s right Don’t sail your boat too close to the edge of the sky 5 Columbus is dead
So too is Marco Polo (if they ever existed) Ah… don’t – please don’t speak because that is an ancient tale of the first wave of humanity That’s absolutely right Please don’t tell the truth that this is the Buddhist year two thousand forty-two Please don’t tell the truth that this is the one thousand ninety-ninth year of the Christian era and within a few clicks of time the first rays of a new century will frolic upon the dermis of the earth Of course not You are not walking on the edge of the twenty-first century world We are not walking on the edge of the twenty-first century world That’s right Don’t sail your boat too close to the edge of the sky Don’t sail your boat too close to shore because you will blunder out of the edge of the world ahead 1999/Bangkok
Children of Southeast Asia Father tells Mother As everybody tells everybody always We are people of the East We should lock all doors and windows to prevent the light from the West from stealing into our homes because that’s how the Devil spreads Evil I don’t know what it is they’re talking about It isn’t something a child like me should concern himself with And when the news comes out of planes knocking out buildings in America on 11 September 2001 it seems that Father is very pleased and then, enraged, takes it out on the government ...We shouldn’t cooperate with America fighting Bin Laden in Afghanistan The crispy fried chicken in front of me is lots more interesting than what grownups talk about How lucky our country has super outlets like this I like Uncle Ken standing by the door with his smile and white goatee Just to see him you know he must be a kind man But here there are too many people even though in this Bangkok of ours there are hundreds of similar outlets to choose from
Sometimes I’m fed up Sometimes Father and Mother must think differently from me But there are many times all the same when we move to a McDo instead and it’s no different Often we must queue up for ages as when buying tickets for a Hollywood movie It makes me all the more fed up and miss Mother’s cooking whose taste by now I can’t remember We people of the East... Father is at it again The government shouldn’t cooperate with America It’s a good thing those skyscrapers were nixed... Mother supports Father fiercely I look outside through the windowpane On the elevated highway by the trade centre cars zip by right before my nose but like on a TV screen with the sound turned off So I think of our brand new limo Mother says Father ordered from Europe I don’t know how far Europe is and I’m fed up with what grownups are talking about I’d rather listen to a tale or some other nice story But I’m just a little Thai boy of eight Too small to express disagreement with big-big grownups Father keeps talking of the same thing on and on
But I haven’t heard Mother complain even once I don’t see what’s interesting about what grownups talk about I don’t know what capitalism is I don’t get it Who is the anti-imperialist of the twenty-first century? And I don’t know why grownups like to swear at farang Even though my big brother is studying in France As if they were no-good children making trouble for their friends at school Or is it that they have white skins and hair another colour than ours? But when my big sister dyes her hair a hundred hues and sometimes looks like a farang singer I don’t see anyone say anything I really don’t get it And worse than that everybody only talks about planes knocking out buildings Father says it’s a good thing for America to be taught a lesson for once Why are they so pleased about thousands of people dead in America? I don’t like what the grownups think at all Today the donuts and milkshakes I like aren’t as yummy as they used to be But I’m just a little Khmer girl of eight born near Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom (we’ve moved to the capital now)
So I shouldn’t displease my parents with the silly things in my head I can’t remember if it was Father or Mother who took me here first The waitress brings us burgers – mine is always the biggest – with French-fries and corn pie to boot How lucky I am I was born in Rangoon unlike the little Karen and the little Mon These kids have no way of knowing how super a McDo is There’s only one thing I don’t get when the grownups say We are people of the East We should lock all doors and windows to prevent the light from the West from stealing into our homes because that’s how the Devil spreads Evil I’m just a little Burmese boy of eight How could I understand what people of my father’s generation are talking about? But I like it here At least there’s no one in a sarong to trespass inside I’ve heard many people talk about World Trade Center, Pentagon, sabotage, terrorists It makes me think of my brother – my brother with his gun in the hills on the border with Thailand
We are people of the East We should lock all doors and windows... Father is at it again ...to prevent the light from the West from stealing into our homes... The lopsided TV screen suspended above our heads has only news of planes knocking out buildings in America in New York City and Washington DC I don’t know George Double You Bush I don’t know Bin Laden For me there’s nothing as interesting as the burger in front of me ...because that’s how the Devil spreads Evil We should finish what we’ve ordered and then talk about this at home I take a big bite of the burger look outside through the windowpane Far out there are only smoky grey buildings as if someone had lit a fire to burn the town for fun That smoke looks like the one on the TV screen when the buildings collapse Father tells Mother That’s good The Devil should be taught a lesson sometime I think of the highest building in the world in our country and then I say What if someone flies a plane into our building as in
America? Allah will protect us, Mother tells me But when I ask Why doesn’t Allah protect America? Father and Mother get angry with me I really don’t understand I’m just a little Malaysian girl of eight born in Kuala Lumpur I’m too young to know the world as well as grownups do I don’t know whom Father is talking with on his mobile his other hand still holding his burger That’s good The Devil should be taught a lesson sometime I don’t know whom Father means But this is not something I’m interested in ...We are people of the East so we should unite and do things our way and then some day the people of the West will praise us Mother looks at Father with admiration as he takes the last bite of burger I’m just a little Vietnamese boy of eight born in the same village as our Uncle Ho (but we’ve moved to Hanoi now) I’m too young to know life
So I ask Why should the West praise us? Is it like me when I want to be praised by grownups? But there’s too much noise in here So nobody can hear what I ask September 2001/Bangkok