Burma in My Mind
Slow-walking monks
move like dawn across the waking street—
bare feet tracing quiet through dust
older than the names of cities.
Morning rises unrushed.
Engines cough themselves awake,
vendors scatter sound like birds,
and roosters compete
with radios and restless dreams.
Yet the monks remain unshaken—
their pace a soft refusal
to hurry with the world.
Inside the windowless bus,
petrol burns the air—
sharp, metallic—
a reminder that the day belongs
to movement and survival.
But beneath it,
lifting gently like memory,
comes the scent of mohinga—
warm, earthy, familiar—
and somewhere at a low wooden stall,
men in longyi lean over steaming bowls,
slurping softly,
pausing only to sip sweet tea
from thick green cups.
Burma, oh Burma—
how long for you?
How I long for you.
Burma, oh Burma.
Two worlds,
one breath:
the harsh and the holy,
the hurried and the timeless.
No one speaks.
No one needs to.
The monks walk.
The city lives.
The mind watches—
unfolding, remembering,
and forgetting again.
Somewhere between incense and exhaust,
between stillness and motion,
between hunger and offering—
something opens,
not seen,
not named,
only felt.
A presence without a center.
A silence that does not resist sound.
Burma, oh Burma—
how long for you?
How I love you.
Burma, oh Burma.
walks beside this one—
not written,
not held,
yet never gone.
Just Burma,
in my mind:
redolent with memory,
alive with absence,
whole in its unfinishedness.
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*An ode of love and gratitude to Shwe Sin.
