In reviewing photos from past travels, I found these beauties taken while travelling in Thailand. They're both of the rugged wildernesses of Koh Sok national park where I stayed for a week living in a floating bamboo hut at the lakes edge.
Throughout my travels there I learned that Thailand is a place of contrasts.
Massive modern cities, tropical beaches and rainforest can all be found in this diverse country, and I also learned that there are many of different styles of poetry in Thailand. This fascinated me as I love exploring new forms of poetry from around the world. After my travels in Thailand, I returned to the UK with a deep connection to the landscape there, particularly the natural (wilderness) areas that I visited. Check out this post about visiting Khao Sok national park during that trip.
The Kloon form has a strict syllabic count and rhyme scheme. When I thought about attempting this form I asked myself the questions; will the form suit the English language? Will it leave me flummoxed and sweating in a poetic maze of confusion? Can I summon enough memories of that trip to do the magical landscape of Thailand justice?
The True Thai Poetic Form
Here goes, lets give this a try. The purple dots indicate syllables with the gaps between them being the separation between words. The green dots are rhyming words and the blue lines show which words need to rhyme with each other... couldn't be simpler 😉 Through my research into Thai poetry I think the form represented in this graphic is called 'Kloon'.
The website below suggests that the kloon is quite an open form where the rhymes can be moved around, but I am going to do my best to adhere strictly to the pattern suggested in the graphic.
The Kloon or Klon (meaning simple verse) is sometimes known as the “true Thai poetic form”. It is the basic and most common Thai verse written with simple subjects and simple words. The Kloon is: ○ stanzaic, written in any number of quatrains ○ syllabic, 4 to 8 syllables per line. ○ composed with each line made up of 2 to 3 phrases. ○ rhymed with an intricate rhyme pattern. The internal rhyme can be optional or reduced. The tone is looser than most Thai forms but it the end syllable of each line is usually rising which is in sync with most Western verse of iambic meter.
Source: poetscollective.org
The Song of the Nightingale
Whispering winds wandering
pondering Khao Sok Nightingale
warbling dawn's mountain trail.
Sinking frail singing vibration
endlessly down granite bones,
limestone thrones of wet aeration
captured in rock's cessation
impatient of nightingale's call.
Thanks for reading 🌴 All images in this post are my own property. If you have enjoyed this poem and blog, please check out my homepage @raj808 for similar content.
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