In recent weeks, actually beginning before the recent coup, I was finding I was getting little flashbacks of snapshot memories about living in Yangon among other things further back, long forgotten. I had been meaning to start recording them but in the rush of moving house didn’t do so until yesterday, when I wrote this poem after some prodding by a friend.
It seems so distant now, and yet these memories that flood back make it seem at the same time at the edge of my senses.
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I Remember
I remember standing on the U-Bein Bridge
In the dust and heat,
Walking under the huge, orange, evening sun,
The old teak creaking and swaying underfoot,
The water beneath us almost gone.
There were Chinese and Burmese tourists,
Excited to see a redhead,
Coming close to ask
(and not ask) for photos.
I remember the roads in Yangon,
Jammed with traffic,
Stinking.
Sweltering.
The people, the strange plants – the small beer stations
Where we sat in the evening warmth,
Drinking Myanmar Lager,
Eating high-risk, high-reward local food.
I remember Mohinga-sellers in the morning,
Waiting by our flats with their rice and fish soup,
Plus an egg.
I remember the roar of mating saltwater crocodiles at dusk
Thrashing in the mangrove creeks.
I remember the moonlight on the Irrawaddy,
Reflecting ghostly pale,
Too delicate and mystical for a camera.
I remember sitting with Flo at night
On the deck overlooking the delta
Sharing two chilled beers.
Thinking together how wondrously strange it is
To contemplate our location,
To think of where we were on Google Maps
And where we came from.
And then there was the boat trip back,
Back up the Irrawaddy,
Back to the town whose name I can’t remember,
Where we sat in a beer station.
Flo, in her white t-shirt,
Me, burnt by the Burmese sun,
In shorts and sandals,
Basking in gratitude
At the wonders of the world
And the joy of unlikely connections.
The Empire Has Fallen 