Poem -25
Choice
By Hein Min Tun
So it’s like knowing
how to teach English
without a teaching certificate.
I hope I can make you understand
when I say I have no mother
if you are referring to the woman
you say my biological mother.
She has said much enough that she is my mother.
I wonder if some mothers would have to say,
but I know some don’t have to.
I have always found a mother slip out
of her eloquence, joyous, burdenless and
invariably tireless. She seems to say
what so-called mother is in words.
Her old dreams scaffolded
have never become an omelet.
My biological mother only knows to borrow
whatever she can from me, never thinking
to return all that she owes. Once, I said I have
a woman who is not her, my real mother.
I would always have tears in my eyes
and hesitancy in the pace of my tongue
when I talk of that woman.
My mother by blood knows very well
memoirs tongue-woven in the past tense,
without a draft that conforms to the proper format,
and artificial flavours added to season them.
The episodes are resurrected from random tombs
of a kid’s multi-layered metamorphosis;
the whole story always coming to a standstill
in inertia in the end,
bulged with its old pristine world.
I hope she also sees a mother
who has been lost all along
the nuances of her child’s karmic show.
The woman I said I have
has emptied my body like her cherished doll;
popping out came
the lights that make me bright like stars
and lovable as spring light,
and to be frank, also the turbid sediments
that should have had their eyes downcast.
With patience, she fixed where need be,
reset them all tenderly that belong to me
and make me, and
smilingly
picked up the dark spills and put them
accurately back into place.
This mechanism of mine is full of mellow fruit pulps and chunks
from her own orchard in the evergreen backyard
watered in sweats clinging to her forehead
through spring, summer, rains and dew.
My biological mother knows
the woman I said has had me
in her sleep for twenty five years.
my pillow still warm with her talcum and breath.
My biological mother says
she can spell
the word mother and
the word son,
and knows well the principles of a mother
and the good old life a mother is entitled to.
But, I can’t see why she will always keep hope in me
after twenty five years of separation
by choice.
- All Rights Reserved
- Poem © Hein Min Tun
~ Hein Min Tun, is a multiple award winning poet and writer hailing from Myanmar. He has received “Distinguished Writer Award” from the Bharat Award for Literature (International Short Story Contest) for two consecutive times – 2022 and 2023. He has also achieved “Tagore Honour” given by the Bengali Association of Poets- Literoma for his glittering pen that has danced over a vast terrain in the literary realm. He has a successful book to his credit; his debut poetry collection “Crescendo” has earned him the “Panorama Golden Book Award – 2024” conferred by Writers Capital International Foundation. Additionally, he is the 2nd runner-up in Rabindranath Tagore Award International Poetry Competition – 2025, bagging “Poiesis Award for Excellence in Poetry”. Above all, Hein Min Tun is the Winner of the prestigious “Reuel International Poetry Prize (2024) for all the poems he has written so far”.
