Other day Ma N3 posted this poem “Ngar” and I’ve been thinking ever since. First I thought of writing a comment on her page and ask about it. But then what the hell, I haven’t post on my site for a while and wanna share the poem with my friends also so I decided to post the poem and my thoughts here.

ငါ

ငါ့ မွာလည္း ငါ ၊ သူ ့မွာ ငါႏွင့္
ငါ့ ငါ သူ ့ငါ ၊ ေတြ ့ၾကခါ၀ယ္
ငါ ႏွင့္ ငါ ခ်င္း ၊ ငါ စစ္ခင္းလ်က္
ပူျပင္းလွ်ံရဲ ငါ ေပါက္ကြဲ၏ ။

ငါ ဒုကၡေပး ၊ ငါ မေအး၍
ငါ ေအးရေၾကာင္း ၊ ခြင့္ခါ ေခ်ာင္းလ်က္
ငါေကာင္းကို ရွာ ၊ ငါဆိုး ခြာေသာ္
ကြာေလသည္ သို ့၊ ျဖစ္သၿမိဳ ့လည္း
ေခါင္းလွ်ိဳ ့ကိုယ့္ေခြ ၊ ပျခဳပ္ေဗြ၌
ငန္းေျမြ မျခား ၊ ႏွဲသံ ၾကားလွ်င္
ပါးပ်ဥ္း ေထာင္လ်က္ ငါသည္ထြက္၏ ။

အို – ဖြားဖက္ ငါ ၊ အသင္ ငါႏွင့္
ငါ မေလွ်ာ့တမ္း ၊ အားအင္ စမ္းအံ့ ။
အစြမ္း သာသူ ၊ ပန္းဆြတ္ယူလိမ့္ ။
ငါမူ ငါ့ကုိ ေအာင္မည္ေလာ။ ။
ငါ့ကို ငါက ေအာင္မည္ေလာ။ ။

မင္းသု၀ဏ္
မတ္လ၊ ၁၉၈၂။
ရွဳမ၀ မဂၢဇင္းမွ

It’s pretty good poem but I’m confused over the last two stanza.
What I understand is:

“Nga” = Me
“Ngar” = Ego or noun in general

Most probably “Ngar” is your ego but for my own easy translation purpose, lets’ take it as someone, say “X”.
So….when I translate, (or this is how I understand)

The 1st line says:

Will X gonna win over ME? (or) Will your Ego win over You?

The 2nd line again says:

Would ME gonna be beaten by X? (or) Will You get beaten by your own Ego?

In both way, you loses. ie. ME loses, and both lines have the same meaning.

Shouldn’t be like

Will X gonna win over ME (Will your Ego win over You?) and
Will ME gonna win over X? (Will You be able to beat your own Ego?)

Ok now, how to write that in Burmese? Ngar Muu Nga Ko Aung Myi Law…
“Muu” is something like “Ka” rite? hmmm….

I think I understand what this poem is trying to say. I’m just being an annoyingly picky person sometimes. May be my whole understanding of the poem is wrong. Sometimes meaning of the poems are so hard to figure out but I still enjoy reading those kinds and try to understand their hidden meaning.

Translation of the poem is something like this. Actually I have no idea how to translate it properly. It’s not direct translation; I just made up some parts cos’ some are weird to translate.

Ngar (Self or Ego)

I have my Ego and you have yours,
When our Egos meet,
Both turn into a fight,
With volcanic destruction, they clashes.

Ego being the problem,
Think of a chance/way to resolve it,
Search for the goods, throw away the bads,
Though you try to discard it,
It will act as a sleeping cobra,
A note from a flute could arouse,
And turn him into a deadly weapon.

Oh – Ego my buddy, shall we,
Test our strength against will,
May the best one win,
Will you win over me?
Will I be defeated by you?

Min Thu Wun
March 1982,
Via: Shu Ma Wa Magazine.

Note: Is “Ngan Mway” a Cobra? or a Viper? or a Krait? I always confused over those snakes but I know it’s definitely not a Swan, “Ngan“. Oh Yes, I’m absolute sure sure. ahee

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