CLOUD ZOO

တက္ကသိုလ်ဝင်တန်း ကဗျာလေးတွေကို သေသေချာချာ ကျက်မှတ်ထားမယ်ဆိုရင် အနည်းဆုံး (၅)မှတ်ကနေ (၇)မှတ်အထိ သေချာတာကြောင့် ဒီနှစ်မှ တက္ကသိုလ်ဝင်တန်းတက်မယ့်မောင်ငယ်ညီမငယ်လေးများသာမက၊ အင်္ဂလိပ်စာလေ့လာလိုသူများအတွက်ပါ အကျိုးရှိစေမယ်လို့ ယုံကြည်ပါတယ်။

CLOUD ZOO

I thought I saw a cloud whale

Sail through a sea of blue;

It changed into an elephant

Of most unusual hue,

And even as I marvelled,

It split itself in two.

I watched a long white serpent

Winding its cloudy way,

To pounce upon a cloud frog

That unsuspecting lay.

The little frog became a bird

And slowly flew away.

All afternoon I watched them,

Such magic as they knew!

I saw a white rhinoceros,

And white flamingos, too,

Till evening shut her deep blue tent

Over my private zoo.

[Norma Gillett]

Words & Phrases for Paraphrasing "Cloud Zoo"
vast blue sky = ကောင်းကင်ပြာ။ amazement = အံ့သြမှု။
unusual colour = ထူးခြားသောအရောင်အသွေး။
unsuspecting lay = lying without suspect = ယုံမှားစရာမရှိဘဲ။
performing a magic show = မျက်လှည့်ပွဲတစ်ခုပြ။
Till evening shut her deep blue tent = till blue sky closed and darkness fell = ကောင်းကင်ပြာပိတ်ပြီးမှောင်သည်အထိ။
split itself in two = make two pieces = နှစ်လွှာပြု။
 

The meaning of the Poem

1.I thought I saw a cloud whale
Sail through a sea of blue;
These lines mean that the poetess saw a cloud in the form of whale moving in the blue sky which looked like a blue sea.

2.It changed into an elephant
Of most unusual hue,
These lines mean that as the poetess watched, the cloud in the form of a whale changed into the form of an elephant which has a strange color.

3.And even as I marvelled,
It split itself in two.
These lines mean that while the poetess was wondering about the strange coloured elephants, it broke into two parts.

4.I watched a long white serpent
Winding its cloudy way,
To pounce upon a cloud frog
That unsuspecting lay.
These lines mean that the poetess watched a white cloud which looked like a long snake, moving in and out, to jump upon frog that lay in the way without suspecting anything.

5.The little frog became a bird
And slowly flew away.
These lines mean that as the poetess watched, the little cloud frog changed into the form of a bird and slowly moved away.

6.All afternoon I watched them,
Such magic as they knew!
These lines mean that the poetess watched the changes of clouds all afternoon and she also wondered how clouds changed themselves into many forms as if by magic.

7. Till evening shut her deep blue tent
Over my private zoo.
These lines mean that the poetess watched the different shapes of clouds until it turned evening and it became too dark for her to see anything in her private zoo the place (sky) where she alone saw these animal shaped clouds.

မူရင်းဖန်တီးသူများအားလုံးကိုလည်း မောင်ငယ်ညီမငယ်လေးတွေကိုယ်စား ကျေးဇူးအထူးပါနော်။ Credit ပေးပါတယ်။