A Thai English poem explicated

Poetry from Thailand

Thai English Poetry -To Win Yourself

Composed by Pompen Hantrakool

Explicated by Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

The text To Win Yourself

Hope and don’t despair

Fall today wait for tomorrow

Strengthen your hope with your forceful heart

At the end your hope shall be fulfilled

Despite disappointment

 it is not wrong to hope so go on

Fight to your end of your energy and wisdom

At least you will win yourself

Explication

The title of the poem To Win Yourself is ironical. People want to conquer others. We are not Alexanders or Kubla Khans. We cannot dare imagine to  conquer the world. Even grabbing the land of our neighbor is a desire of the moth for the sky for us and the present reader who belongs to the common run of men. But thanks to the capitalist values Competition is at the heart of the market cultures and competitions are distributed all over the globe on every plane whatever. In other words, the spirit of competition generated by the market culture has penetrated into every rift of our life. There is competition in sports, there is competition in studies, there is competition in getting a job . In short, one has to compete with one’s fellowmen to live or to survive in this world. So we go to the temples and pray so that we get God’s blessings for surviving in the competition. We go to the party offices and ask for blessings so that we could win in the competition and get good jobs . Getting an employment is a trophy with many of us in the developing countries. We do not have the right to live.We must earn our livelihood through competition. And hence visit any bookshop and you will find it abounding with the art of positive thinking. They are very straight in their exhortation. If one fails in a competitive examination and fails in getting an employment , he is sure to be dejected. Especially this is a world where fortune never favours the brave. Despite the fact that you fare well in an examination, to your utter dismay you might find your results dismal. You lose in the competitive exam. But these positive thinking books prevail upon you for the time being and you pull up your socks and go to a competitive examination second time like a knight errant going off to a tourney in an attitude. But here is a poem that does not ask us how to win friends or how to win lucrative jobs. It tells the reader that it will give them the know how or else teach them how each one of them could win himself and herself. Well, why should I win myself? The answer is simple. I am never my own man. I have to obey the social norms. I must earn money. I have to look after my wife and children. I am bound by my duties towards them. And so on.Hence I am not my own man. I have no liberty to live my life the way I like. So any poem with a title To Win Yourself draws the reader. Because every reader wants to be his own man or women. But the very phrase To Win Yourself only fingers at the hard fact that me and every reader is faced with his or her own self as the antagonist. It is the me that has put me in chains. And hence I must win myself and be the master of myself to get rid of my chains and the life of a prisoner.

The poem however is ambiguous. Its addressee could be everyone who finds himself defeated in the world of getting and spending- in this world of rat race. Many of us could repeat Macbeth- out and out brief candle! Life is a dull story told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. And there could be a young man crying- out of the day and the night a joy has taken its flight. Oh life! Oh time! In response to such blusters Longfellow says – tell me not in mournful numbers life is but an empty dream. But Longfellow’s line is long and laden with soft consonants such as m, n, b , d . Our poet Pompen is however brief in her exhortation- Hope and don’t despair. The voiced fricative H has been set in contrast with the d of despair. The one word hope the first part of the first line simply outdoes the darkness of – and don’t despair. Yes, the phrase- and don’t despair is not positive enough. But hope has no blemish in it . It is not made of the earthiness of the earth. The second line reads – fall today wait for tomorrow. Well we could respond to Pompen repeating before her the soliloquy of Macbeth------Tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays are lighted fools the way to dusty death.  But Pompen does not seemingly pay heed to that She asks to strengthen our hopes with our forceful hearts.  In other words whatever we look forward to we should strive for the same whole heartedly. To seek to strive to fight  and never to yield.But suppose  if  hopes are ab initio vicious? If  one wants to emulate another Hitler or  Casanova  ? With Pompen  there is no wrong   to hope. Any desire is worth pursuing provided one pursues it with all his heart. Here  it is post modern and not logo centric With her there is transvaluation of values.It is often said that it is our desire that binds us. To win ones own self one must win over ones desires. Well the desire for becoming bodhisattva or the desire for the attainment of bodhicitta is as much a desire as any other desire under the sun. If to desire is bad and binds one then the desire to be a Buddha is as much binding as the desire for becoming a billionaire. Bodhicitta does not admit of anything called good or evil and surely there is nothing wrong in desiring  any thing. Pompen exhorts ---Fight to the end of your energy.But what should be the consequence of such a fight? There Pompen seems to contradict herself. The fourth line states--- At the end the hope shall be fulfilled. On the contrary the  eighth line states that when the battle is lost and  won , at least one will win ones self. But these two statements are contradictory on the surface only. What are the desires but our selves. If we could attain our desires we  attain ourselves. All passions spent there is the calm of mind. One glories in the conquest of ones own self and becomes complacent. But if we fail? One retrospects then and attains a  philosophy of life that is satisfying. One wins ones own self whether he wins or loses in the battle of life. Since any of my  desires is me if my desires in the world without is fulfilled I only  conquer myself. If my desires in the world without crumble down I  realise the hollowness of the vanity fair that is the world without . What is hope? Pompen has used the word hope as a noun and as  an intransitive verb. As an intransitive verb  hope means to wish for a particular thing that one considers possible. Hope as noun means a longing or desire for something accompanied by the belief in the possibility of occurrence.When hopes come true or expected things happen one finds how foolish it was to hope. A boy from Scotland came to England and found an yard  to be an yard  and a foot to be a foot. His hopes of visiting England  were fulfilled and he found that it was foolish to hope and thereby he won his self that was earlier duped by hope. Again when he found an yard to be an yard his hopes of finding something novel in England failed and he was face to face with his own self and conquered his self. Hence there is no qualitative difference between worldly successes and failures If we strive hard for any thing  we are destined to win ourselves and that is the be all and end all of human life.What ielse is the world but  the externalization of my mind. If I conquer the world  I conquer myself. If I  fail to conquer the world I realize the foolishness of my hopes and my mind can no longer distract myself and I shall be the master of myself

The poem is like a koan . very deep in its import.