Ode the Myanmar Student

A recent podcast interview with Thaw Htet was released in an episode titled “Whatever It Takes.” This was more than fitting, as the young guest courageously shared the wide range of activities he was supporting to resist the military coup, despite the personal risk to himself. Sadly, all contact with Thaw Htet ceased several days before the episode was released, and we now all hold our breath hoping he remains safe.

Appropriately, the poem read before his interview was from Tayar Min Way. According to Kenneth Wong, he also went by Shwe Phone Lu or Chit Nyi Nyi. Wong goes on to write:

He was a member of the inner circle of dissident students responsible for the 1988 uprising. For his role, he was imprisoned from 1990 to 1994. At Min Wai's funeral in 2007, prominent Burmese student leader Min Ko Naing read a poem, "The Groom of Fallen Stars," as a tribute to his friend.

In an anthology published to commemorate Min Wai's passing (Remembering Taya Min Wai, August 2009, Moemaka Multimedia), one of his cellmates recalled how Taya Min Wai composed poems by memorizing his lines in prison because he was forbidden to possess pencils and papers. It's believed that one of his acclaimed novels, The Moon of the Age of Flowers (Pan Khit Ka La Min), was conceived and written behind bars.

The military has long been afraid of free expression and creativity of any kind, as we have seen tragically play out this year. Actors, singers, and artists have all been targeted and arrested, and the regime has gone after poets with a particular vengeance. It is for this reason we continue to honor and remember the words of Burmese poets on our episodes, those who sacrificed in previous years, as well as those whose voices will not be silenced today, no matter the risks.

Following is the poem read on the recent episode, which is especially fitting for Thaw Htet:

 အမည်မသိကဗျာ

တာရာမင်းဝေ

မင်းရဲ့အရိုးတစ်မှုံ

နိဗ္ဗာန်ဘုံအထိယူပြီး 

ဘုရားရှင်ကိုပြကြည့်ချင်တယ် 

မင်းဟာသူရဲလေးဖြစ်တယ် 

မင်းဟာ အာဇာနည်လေးဖြစ်တယ် 

မင်းဟာ ဗမာကျေင်းသားလေးဖြစ်တယ်။ 

Untitled Poem

By Taryar Min Way

If I could

I would take a speckle of your bone dust

To the heavens above

To show to the Gods

You are a hero

A martyr

A Myanmar student

Translated by May