Greensleeves

Greensleeves

Let me start with a burmese poem.

For my lady ...
From the hills ...
I bring some flowers to wear ...
The petals are yellow ...
The peduncle seems to be stained with emerald ...
And the vine is so so green ...

It’s one of the pretty poems of which the composer is unknown.

In poems, there may be ambiguity, secrets and multipliablity more or less. Using the ambiguity, the poet pokes our mind to think. He buries all the secrets in the poem with a true no-looking-back. Both the ambiguity and the secret are the things the poet wishes the reader to find out and grasp somehow. However, multipliablity is not a flow of one direction like the other two. Maybe it comes from the poet or maybe it comes from the effort or the creation of the reader. Some readers are having a very good quality in diverse thinking that the poet should be grateful.

At a glance, the poem is quite simple. It’s so easy to understand that it has been used in the text book for the children to learn burmese. However, in the emotional eyes of our legendary singer and composer, Ton Tay Thein Tan, the poem is wearing a different color. He separated the last line of the poem and he sensed it differently. 'Vine is so green'. That’s what he used in his famous song as the major and introduction verse. According to burmese language, Vine can be also translated as the name of a girl. And ‘so green’ can also translated ‘giving a cold shoulder’ or ‘acting like a stranger’. So as result, the poem which is telling ‘I bring the flower for my lady’ is bearing a different meaning ‘I bring the flowers for her ... but she dosen’t care’ according to the emotional diverse thinking of the reader. Quite sad.

As mentioned above, the poem is author-unkown. But I’m not so sure. It’s better if someone can confirm on this. The first time I came across this poem is in my text book when I was maybe first grade or second grade student. Usually, most of the composers are not mentioned in the text books for the primary level students. I think even some famous ones are mentioned, we can read only the poems, any name is not mentioned at the end of the poem. If someone who knows very well about burmese literature can explain about this poem, it will be terribly grateful.

Moreover, everytime I read this poem, I remember the ‘Greensleeves’ of Henry VIII and the story of Anne. But if you know the full story, you may complain about the love of Henry VIII. If he loved her much that he wrote a beautiful poem like this, then why did he kill her? At first, I also thought that way. At that time, the song ‘Greensleeves’ is like a mocking to the word ‘true love’. But later, I can see everything in a different light. According to Greeks, Music is the product of the nine angels called Muses. Once I've read, art ,maybe in any form, is on its own after flowing out from someone’s heart. For examples, some authors have to end a series according to the audience, and a singer has to be badly critized after covering his own song creating a new version. The copyright law we understand and we practice is a differnt matter in this case. Another thing we can take into account before we accuse Henry of being cruel is that it’s a matter of heart. Nobody knows about his heart when he’s deciding to excute Anne and also his heart after that. We cannot know. The people of that era also couldn’t know. It’s not so sure even he himself knew his heart. One nature of our human beings is we can see our heart only by chance.