this is a s.e.a. write award-winning (nobel prize equivalent for southeast asia literature, although likely far from it) poetry collection by saksiri meesomsueb titled “the hand that is white” or, alternately “a hand is white.” he won this in 1992, in the year of a brutal crackdown of protestors following a coup d’etat that killed and injured almost a thousand people. the context of this work is clear, but saksiri deals with this in a very disappointing, beat around the bush way that is so emblematic of thai cultural norms. i wouldn’t deny the formal experiments of his poetry, breaking the very rigorous traditional forms and rhyming patterns, sometimes to the point of blank verses which is unheard-of in thai classics and his rhyming skills are top-notch. but the content of his poetry is very much small c conservative with an essentialist view of human nature, bemoaning many of the social injustices and progress through repetitive symbolism, narrow-mindedly focusing on sheer representation of the humanist ideal without much thought of anything else. this formula is great once or twice when it accidentally makes a good critique, such as the poem dogs in the lead (which you can read for yourself on asylumptote, translated by noh anothai), but i find it mostly irritating, confined and traditional—the sort of critique that could be institutionalized and that’s exactly what happened (s.e.a. write itself was born out of a hotel marketing campaign and always presided over by a member of the royal family; in its early days it was the queen herself). “if only people are just good, get along and stop killing each other!” saksiri suggests while being honored by the very perpetrators of those killings.