Saw Wai
In Burma this January the poet Saw Wai was arrested for writing and publishing a love poem for Valentine’s Day with a secret message critical of Burma’s military dictator, Than Shwe. Entitled "February 14," the poem –– which appeared in the Rangoon magazine The Love Journal — is nominally about the end of a love affair. The brokenhearted speaker sobs that his love for a fashion model has gone unrequited. But the poem is also an acrostic –– that is, the first letters of the lines, read down vertically, spell out a message, and in this case that message is "Power Crazy Senior General Than Shwe." In Burmese, Than means "million" and Shwe means "gold," so when Saw Wai writes, in the last two lines of his poem, "Millions of people who know how to love please clap your hands of gilded gold and laugh out loud," he is secretly pointing an accusatory finger at Than Shwe, the "power crazy" head of the junta. It took courage to write those lines.
Well, we are lucky for many reasons that we do not live in a military dictatorship that reads poetry with the meticulous closeness of a censor
See "Burmese Poet Arrested for Veiled Protest," Associated Press, January 24, 2008
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2246060,00.html
— DL