The Scream
Mar Nwe Aye
This sound didn’t come from the Norwegian Forest.
It came from an Asian country that didn’t have a chance to develop.
Just a moment ago, we fought unarmed.
Now look: let’s use weapons
we said, through sobs.
Before the sobbing has ended,
again we must return to the fray, without oxygen.
We don’t know which god they follow and which Dhamma they listen to.
This spring, they pretended to be possessed, acting ludicrous.
While, for us, lives were shattering and bodies in their death throes.
A night traveller, driving a bullock cart,
moon following them, close behind:
the pain is always there.
In different chests is leaking
the same thick black anger
stronger than waves in a storm,
and the stab-in-the-heart pains of our helplessness
trying to peel away our human dignity, layer by layer.
Today, the next day,
a line of souls, shaken down,
as in the paddy fields,
when the crows step on toddy fruits
and they hit the ground.
We have to sit and watch from afar.
We just sit and watch.
‘Your wisdom guards your life.’
Now that our lives are surveilled by megalomaniacs,
facing these events
our rationality gives way under guilt and inconsolable grief.
These events shall not be forgotten
even on the day when doves come
and coo, nesting on the roof.
These events cannot be forgotten;
must not be forgotten.
If they weren’t power-crazy, and didn’t boil over with greed,
we wouldn’t have had to leave those soulless bodies in a pile, bereft of dignity.
If they weren’t power-crazy, and lacking reason,
hope wouldn’t have vanished and agony wouldn’t explode like volcanos in millions of people’s chests.
If someone is facing difficulties, someone else has to help.
That’s the basic law of humanity.
Now, like this, when we all suffer and grieve at the same time,
who has the energy to show humanity to whom, and how?
In this way, day by day, we try to keep going,
hesitantly approaching that which remains of the future
or screaming with rage like a cow that knows she is headed to the slaughterhouse.
Our mouths muttering incantations, our minds numb,
we look ahead.
It came from an Asian country that didn’t have a chance to develop.
Just a moment ago, we fought unarmed.
Now look: let’s use weapons
we said, through sobs.
Before the sobbing has ended,
again we must return to the fray, without oxygen.
We don’t know which god they follow and which Dhamma they listen to.
This spring, they pretended to be possessed, acting ludicrous.
While, for us, lives were shattering and bodies in their death throes.
A night traveller, driving a bullock cart,
moon following them, close behind:
the pain is always there.
In different chests is leaking
the same thick black anger
stronger than waves in a storm,
and the stab-in-the-heart pains of our helplessness
trying to peel away our human dignity, layer by layer.
Today, the next day,
a line of souls, shaken down,
as in the paddy fields,
when the crows step on toddy fruits
and they hit the ground.
We have to sit and watch from afar.
We just sit and watch.
‘Your wisdom guards your life.’
Now that our lives are surveilled by megalomaniacs,
facing these events
our rationality gives way under guilt and inconsolable grief.
These events shall not be forgotten
even on the day when doves come
and coo, nesting on the roof.
These events cannot be forgotten;
must not be forgotten.
If they weren’t power-crazy, and didn’t boil over with greed,
we wouldn’t have had to leave those soulless bodies in a pile, bereft of dignity.
If they weren’t power-crazy, and lacking reason,
hope wouldn’t have vanished and agony wouldn’t explode like volcanos in millions of people’s chests.
If someone is facing difficulties, someone else has to help.
That’s the basic law of humanity.
Now, like this, when we all suffer and grieve at the same time,
who has the energy to show humanity to whom, and how?
In this way, day by day, we try to keep going,
hesitantly approaching that which remains of the future
or screaming with rage like a cow that knows she is headed to the slaughterhouse.
Our mouths muttering incantations, our minds numb,
we look ahead.
Mar Nwe Aye is an Oxfordshire-based Myanmar poet. Her poems and essays have previously been published in Myanmar; this is her first English publication. A forest school teacher by profession, her schools were forced to close when the military staged a coup in February. She hopes one day to return and aid the recovery process of the future Federal Democratic Myanmar.
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