My Sole Wish by Moe Hein

ဒီေန ့ မိုးဟိန္း (သားဂ်ာနယ္ေက်ာ္) ေရးတဲ့ ကဗ်ာတစ္ပုဒ္နဲ ့ စာသားတစ္ခ်ိဳ ့ကို ျပန္ၿပီး ဖတ္ျဖစ္တယ္။ ကဗ်ာကိုလည္း သေဘာက်ပါတယ္။ ေရးထားတဲ့ စာေတြကိုလည္း ႏွစ္သက္ပါတယ္။ အဂၤလိပ္စာ အေရးအသားကလည္း ေျပာစရာမလိုေအာင္ ေကာင္းပါတယ္။

“My Sole Wish”
In this very country
I wish to be reborn
loving and serving it.

I breathe its air
I eat its food
and grow up as a tree.

I care not storms
I fear not winds
come whatever for.

Happy am I
to live and die
on this beloved soil.
And to be its citizen
once again, to love and serve.

For a fish, no place is better than a river. For a bird, no happier can it be than in the woods. For man, a question also rises, what is the best? I, for one, would answer “his homeland.” Do I sound patriotic? But that is not the point. It is simply a man’s love for his soil.
Whenever I travel up or down country, a feeling of gratitude and joy overwhelms me. The fields, things growing, valley or mountain, monuments or houses, people at work, children playing, and etc. …all become a quilt. Patterns and colours may differ but the quilt is one piece. Likewise, society and surrounding merge into oneness.
Looking at this oneness of souls and soil, in other words, a country and its citizens, I am filled with pride. Since days of yore, our ancestors have gone through thick and thin, weal and woe. Times may be good, times may be bad as history will show, but we have not lost our identity. The struggle for the better continues.
As a Buddhist, and as a devotee, I do believe in “the rounds of birth”. I do not know my past life nor the future. What matters most is the present. Here, in this country, I was born. Here, I have grown up. I have enjoyed all the merits that this country could give. From the time of our forefathers to the present, the shaping and making of this country is the greatest task. With sweat and blood, the noble ones have toiled and sacrificed for this generation and for more to come. We are indebted to them. Being a son of this soil, I must serve so. Out of love and duty, and to the best of my ability, I must do utmost for the land I live in. For me, one life is not enough to fulfill this wish.
Let me be born here again, in Myanmar. I fear not what I have to face. Whatever the odds. So long as I am a citizen breathing its air, quenching my thirst with its water, and living on its produce, I shall be happy. My head and heart will uphold and cherish all the values of the land I am born in. To be among one’s countrymen and serve the land together, is my sole wish. Nothing great, just a simple and strong wish, may I say.

Photo Source : Myanmarventure