It begins with me and steps through a holiday<\/p>\n
they took in Spain some years ago when<\/p>\n
they still bothered to use gum to fill in the cracks.<\/p>\n
The lady of the house, her brother had once been married<\/p>\n
to Aung San Su Kyi.<\/p>\n
That feels like 3 rather than 6.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Because it became one of my mother\u2019s obsessions,<\/p>\n
the support and discussion of Aung San,<\/p>\n
at the time, under house arrest,<\/p>\n
I heard the story so many times<\/p>\n
I began to be able to tell it for myself.<\/p>\n
I grew tall each time I told the story<\/p>\n
noting the link I now had with the<\/p>\n
Great woman.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Then she was freed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It continues where I lose my hope for an enlightened future<\/p>\n
In a modern country called Myanmar<\/p>\n
It might as well have still been Burma<\/p>\n
for the lies she began to tell and represent.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If there is three between me and she,<\/p>\n
then there is one<\/p>\n
between me and he who survived the<\/p>\n
On-going genocide of the Rohinga.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I taught him while I was being as best an activist<\/p>\n
I could muster in middle age and not lose my passport<\/p>\n
Inside a camp for asylum seekers.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It continues where I witness the colours of truth that<\/p>\n
make up the irises of all the survivors<\/p>\n
who shared breath, the same eyes<\/p>\n
and who would watch with me<\/p>\n
on the news, this once venerated martyr<\/p>\n
deny the savage pain of their existence.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My mother sits now silent on the topic<\/p>\n
Of Aung San Suu Kyi, remembering instead the<\/p>\n
wife of the couple, whose brother had once been married<\/p>\n
and how this wife carried with her<\/p>\n
a sense of a higher class, a classical education and<\/p>\n
in the hot days and cool nights,<\/p>\n
the life of a child who could never grow old.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I too would rather think of a life unchanged,<\/p>\n
educated and yet youthful enough to defy<\/p>\n
the expectations of those who need a leader.<\/p>\n
Instead, that other story, has found its way<\/p>\n
into my personal saga..<\/p>\n
The loss of values, the denial of truth<\/p>\n
and changes to the apparent worth of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It begins with me and steps through a holiday they took in Spain some years ago when they still bothered to use gum to fill in the cracks. The lady of the house, her brother had once been married to Aung San Su Kyi. That…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1278,"featured_media":62277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,441],"tags":[3441,3480,3476,3478,3475,3479,3477],"class_list":["post-61582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-poetry-prompt-responses","tag-jlnash","tag-asylumseeker","tag-aungsansuukyi","tag-burma","tag-janenash","tag-myanmar","tag-rohinga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1278"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61582"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63447,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61582\/revisions\/63447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}