For Burma: A Lament

Lo, my inner-mind, what many would call my soul was in such duress and was greatly burdened. Equally yoked between compassion and anger.As another decadent American day passed I set my soul as king as my eyes ceded control in the usual suzerain agreement.The first moments of slumber numbed me and behold everything exploded around me not in a wreath of eradicating destruction but of magnificent creation.

Lo, I walked the streets of Yangon. And I Lamented.

What now Burmese brother? I passed through debris both inanimate and living. The sky above now empty of malice and blazing blue where before a great palette painted with all the colors of unstoppable natural force.

The Cyclone. Your autograph on every building, on every face. The Sky. The grand reflector of hope and daily initiative finds no use in the barren stalls of the streets, the barren looks of my brothers. I walk and do not stop to rest, to mourn, for there is no death dread in their grand cycle and weariness is no factor as I press on.

The old man sits on his bucket as I pass, his family sprawled around him crying , baking in the sun. I ask him in his tongue if he finds solace in the light rays. He does not respond, he does not break his gaze.

I pass a group of gendarmes but they cannot suppress me. They suffer with the dispossessed and only fear now drives them to keep order in the aftermath.“Their brave faces are poor masks” I call to them but they are already out of range.“Why do you patrol this wound, this self-infliction” I shriek. “Why do you serve a more enduring tragedy?” But they do not respond and as they march to pillage whatever hope was still seeping and oozing from the receding many waters.

And I walk the beach where the terror had strode ashore from its nourishing pool and crushed my brothers.

Amidst the twisted trees lay the dead. And I weep. I moved amongst them and those who prepared the disappeared. The living’s powdered faces give them the appearance of the lost only distinguishable by their tired slow movements.

Here and then I stop but I do not question my surroundings. The broken buildings marching towards a distant ocean are pall bearers for who it is not known. For all those who perish around me and for the many who perished before I began my sojourn would they be so much more encouraged if these lonely buildings carried away the stench of their seclusion. And by this I meant the head, the masochistic illusionist, who held a world’s attention with the right hand and their repressed culture by gun point with the other behind their back. I cannot find my voice or did I ever have it? I thrash out and falter against the broken down curb and fall to my knees. I can only offer hurried curses of myself and my utter reluctance to look past my own manicured life. The easy way is taken and I blame it all on my people and our idealistic notion of country and success. But as I lay in my own existential ashes my phoenix refuses rebirth. Truly brothers of Burma I am to blame. “It must begin within my own innerwork” I cry and lament. How long I do not know but when I am brought back to my surroundings a young boy stands at my side and he draws me back to the terrible now. Was it that I was selfish or that the cyclorama of this Burma that this boy bears the paint of, the pain of, was just too much for a weary traveler?

He bids me follow and we walk on. This boy is no more than the scarecrows shadow with eyes of the new moon. There is joy there inside his emaciated belly and burning just inside his hollow cheeks. I am almost angered by this and I ask him with a sweep of my hand how this could be reason for his amiable way? He does not answer but bids me on for I must be his witness he says lightly as he labors on. His steps fall heavy for someone of his age but his mind is quick as he points to certain landmarks and people along the way spinning a yarn for his Dante. He wishes to educate me, to make me the reluctant herald when at last I return. He offers no venom even when he motions at the houses and buildings of the head. They have no sway over him not now with his last steps. Where shall I go he asks me, when I fade away? I cast him a vision of my heaven and he finds comfort in this.

We walk on to a point outside the city where my companion has lain down and does not stir. I can offer no help, no sustenance, no aid and as I kneel besides him is heart does not respond and he is gone. I do not weep for this is just a chapter in the greater grand tragic novel.

I steady myself and rise and soon join a group gathered around a simple wooden sign posted near a road up to Yangon. It bears the rust of the present which has recently begun to crumple and reveal a treasure below. In the curvy fantastic dreamscape of their writing it is clearly seen. Rangoon.

And the head could not quell it and those there gloried in the glimpse. In this way the Leviathan brought death and hope.