Songs of the Love Nights of Laos (Wan-Pak Nights)

Disty and I are home now. We arrived on Friday night. Sometime during the sleep-altered, jet-lagged night, Disty discovered a book on Andy's shelf called The White Nightjar. One of the life projects I came home with is to help collect Lao literature in Lao, help create a list of the 100 (or so) classical works of Lao, and help arrange for their publication in Lao PDR in Lao language. Much of the literature is oral and is or will be lost, unless someone collects it all and writes it down. Much of the written works were etched on palm leaves, some of which is being preserved by the Digital Library of Lao Manuscripts (DLLM), where I visited with David Wharton in Vientiane and will write about my visit and their important work soon.

I will also post something soon about The White Nightjar, but, this morning, as I was googling to find low lying Lao literary fruit, I found these three snippets in a collection called The Garden Of Bright Waters: One Hundred And Twenty Asiatic Love Poems, translated by Edward Powys Mathers, and published in 1920. Now, I am hunting down the original sources from which Mathers translated—let me know, if you know. But after reading these, I thought, what a lovely way to come back home. I especially love the lines: If I had the moon at home/I would open my house wide/To the four winds of the horizon,/So that the clouds that surround her/Should escape and be shaken away.

At the eighth evening of the waxing or waning of the moon, when even Buddha has no fault to find with love-making in the thickets. Songs, of which I have translated three, are sung on these nights to the accompaniments of the "Khane," a pan-pipe of seven flutes; some being reserved for the singing of the wandering bands of girls, and others for answer by the youths.


MISADVENTURE

Ever at the far side of the current
The fishes hurl and swim,
For pelicans and great birds
Watch and go fishing
On the bank-side.

No man dare go alone
In the dim great forest,
But if I were as strong
As the green tiger
I would go.

The holy swan on the sea
Wishes to pass over with his wings,
But I think it would be hard
To go so far.

If you are still pure,
Tell me, darling;
If you are no longer
Clear like an evening star,
You are the heart of a great tree
Eaten by insects.
Why do you lower your eyes?
Why do you not look at me?

When the blue elephant
Finds a lotus by the water-side
He takes it up and eats it.
Lemons are not sweeter than sugar.

If I had the moon at home
I would open my house wide
To the four winds of the horizon,
So that the clouds that surround her
Should escape and be shaken away.

KHAP-SALUNG

Seeing that I adore you,
Scarf of golden flowers,
Why do you stay unmarried?
As the liana at a tree's foot
That quivers to wind it round,
So do I wait for you. I pray you
Do not detest me....

I have come to say farewell.
Farewell, scarf;
Garden Royal
Where none may enter,
Gaudy money
I may not spend.




THE HOLY SWAN

Fair journey, O holy swan with gold wings;
O holy swan that I love, fair journey!
Carry this letter for me to the new land,
The place where my lover labours.
If it rains fly low beneath the trees,
If the sun is hot fly in the forest shadows;
If any ask you where you are going
Do not answer.
You who rise for so long a journey,
Avoid the roofs at the hour when the sun is red.
Carry this letter to the new land of my lover.
If he is faithful, give it to him;
If he has forgotten, read it to him only
And let the lightning burn it afterwards.