So the Library, So Also the Museum

Alfred Nobel read his own obituary 
in the wake of his weapons of mass destruction.
Maung Chaw Nwe had written his own epitaph 
in one of his poems. 
In another
an eighty-five-year-old veteran artist
lives with his wife in a flat on a mountain slope. 
A pile of paintings titled ‘Myaynigone Night Bazaar’
in his living room, 
all his works are in rough strokes. 
He has reproduced them 
for twenty years or so, it’s a problem,
the same in poetry, I didn’t know, I thought 
poets copied words from a dictionary.
Painting the present with hands from the past 
in art this is called reproduction. 
It is bad representation.
It may be difficult to go back to the post-war years. 
You might end up in the Paleolithic age. 
Yes, we can still live in the battle, but 
remember, the war has been over for more than thirty years. 
They have informed me of this.
They have told me all about that. 
You guys are going back to the Stone Age
under colonial rain-trees.
The moonlight peels off like old paint from a wall.
On every street corner, there are rusty water taps from the municipal.
They came home from the war — not all of them.
The records inflate the number of returning troops.
So it goes, a poem is just doing her job.
The original is never pure.

So the Library, So Also the Museum