This poem is taken from PN Review 206, Volume 38 Number 6, July - August 2012.
Three Burmese Poets
Moe Way
So the Library, So Also the Museum
Alfred Nobel read his own obituary
In the wake of his weapons of mass destruction
Maung Chaw Nwe had written his own epitaph
In one of his poems
In another
An eighty-five-year-old veteran artist
Lives with his wife in a flat on a mountain slope
A pile of paintings titled 'Myaynigone Night Bazaar'
In his living room
All his works are in rough strokes
He has reproduced them
For twenty years or so, it's a problem,
The same in poetry, I didn't know, I thought
Poets copied words from a dictionary
Painting the present with hands from the past
...
So the Library, So Also the Museum
Alfred Nobel read his own obituary
In the wake of his weapons of mass destruction
Maung Chaw Nwe had written his own epitaph
In one of his poems
In another
An eighty-five-year-old veteran artist
Lives with his wife in a flat on a mountain slope
A pile of paintings titled 'Myaynigone Night Bazaar'
In his living room
All his works are in rough strokes
He has reproduced them
For twenty years or so, it's a problem,
The same in poetry, I didn't know, I thought
Poets copied words from a dictionary
Painting the present with hands from the past
...
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