Decorating Bedroom for My love

กวินทรากร

Decorating Bedroom for My love
Chettapat Wisaijorn
English translation by Pavaphun Tohsang

Collecting stars from the sky to wall your room,
Spreading beautiful silk blanket to tuck you up tonight
Look up! Little angel flying above
A shabby teddy bear sitting by your side to warm your night

Fireflies in the sky making a journey to the Milky Way
Collect as many as you want and well keep them together.
Sweet cicadas singing lullabies
To complete the night whole with beautiful sounds.

Tiding clouds into a soft pillow
A magic touch of flowers dancing around
I wish you a sweet dream my little angel.
Twinkle little stars and the moon will be your friends.

Kiss on a cheek that means my heart,
Harmonizing gently is about to start.
Lovely words are sweet, but real enough.
Take some rest my dear,
I am sitting next to you, here.

Sharing the lullabies in your bedroom,
Including the beautiful poem written from my heart
Sweetened stars sparkling up my night
I hope you find the other Milky Way, the one I had prepared for you.

Let the world discover my heart.
My love and poetry are there and forever!
Until the end of my day,
My words will never fall away.







Literary Analysis

	
	The poem Decorating Bedroom for My Love is originally written in Thai by Chettapat Wisaijorn, and has been translated to English by Pavaphun Tohsang.  
	This poem can be interpreted in many ways, but principally here, we will examine it in two levels.
First of all, the main theme of the poem is about romantic love. According to the poem, the poet created a lullaby love song for the girl he was in love with. The sweet nocturnal ambience was written down in words. The way the bedroom was fascinatingly decorated by his comprehensive poetic language shows the warmth of his heart and how much he adored her.
We may notice the influence of Buddhism and Renaissance beliefs in the poem. The poet, despite being Thai, is so much influenced by Petrarchan sonnet tradition in which we see the lover complaining of his mistress rejection and displaying his own resolution resulting from it. However, what the poet did is something different. In its place one finds the central theme of mutability, the imperfection and impermanence of the sublunary world in the first five stanzas and providing the foil for the rest of the poem.
In contrast to the mutability theme, the concluding stanza proclaims the poets Buddhist belief as the antidote to time and change. The poets love for his own work transcends the limitations of the fallen world. The Latin saying of Ars longa, vita breve (art is long, life is brief) becomes the underlying theme, arrayed by the Thai poets handwriting. So the Latin saying goes, the poem means more than just an expression of love. Although the feelings the poet has for the woman fade away, the charming words he has chosen will still remain there and he, himself, will be remembered, too. Therefore, it can be concluded that the poet sees the poem as the monument of himself.
After beginning of the poem which begins with a noun phrase Collecting stars in the sky to wall your bedroom, the next five stanzas develop metaphors which conveys to readers five senses of perception.
For examples, first, the light of stars, the Milky Way, and fireflies, the little angel hung above and the teddy bear give the sense of vision. That the poet mentions about stars makes the poem so fairytale-like since stars symbolize something fantasy and invaluable. Also, the Milky Way is a symbol of the majesty of the whole universe. It can be seen that the poet is sharing what he perceives with the person he is addressing to. Second, the sweet lullabies of cicadas portray the imagery of auditory. When the poet is not in love, the cicadas might mean nothing to him. On the other hand, when he is in love, things he used to take for granted become beautiful and precious. The olfactory is also portrayed in the word the magic touch of flower. It is generally known that women love flowers. Here, flowers have been written down in words as a symbol of love. Fourth, the touch of warmth is expressed by the word beautiful silk blanket. The blanket does not only give the touch of warmth but also the wonderful look of value and beauty since it is made of beautiful silk. One might even discern the sense of taste in the word kiss, as the language in the poem can be both moral and erotic. Morally, in the sense of altruistic love  maternally and paternally  people often kiss to express the warmth of the family. Yet, romantically, to kiss someone can be further considered erotic and sexual desire as well.
The poets criticism of the night being more preferable than the day suggests the setting of rural area. The Western Romantic concepts of primitivism, naturalism and individualism are also obvious here as the picture of the beautiful nature is written down in the poem. To the poet, himself, in order to express love to someone, he would rather choose to create pictures of nature and pieces of art than to buy luxurious ornaments. Girls, in general, may like gifts such as trendy high heel shoes, necklace, mobile phones. However, those materials can be bought anytime very easily, as long as we have money. Furthermore, since fashion in the modern world changes very fast, precious things or expensive possessions change and lose their value very fast too. However, the treasures of art or poetry hold dear and its value which can never be traced as it is from the inner soul of the creator. It shows that superficiality does not really matter in the long term, especially for love. Therefore, according to the poem, in order to convey love to someone, to create a piece of art will bring about passion more strongly than to give other materials in the world of the consumerism.