Together

                  Together

            A poem by George of Thailand

              For Chang and Eng of Siam

Together,                                        

Joined from before birth,

Separated only by death,

You,

Chang and Eng,

The original Siamese twins,

Never left each other’s side:

Don’t we all long for

Such a life companion?

Be careful what you wish for!

Together

You fathered 21 children,

Chang 11, Eng 10,

Chang’s children had their mother

Eng’s children had their mother,

Separate mothers,

Mothers who were sisters!

Together

You toured the whole world;

You who were born

Poor in a small Thai village becoming

Rich Southern Gentlemen Farmers,

Plantation and slave owners in

North Carolina.

Together

You became poor again,

Losing your slaves

In a war between peoples

Who wanted to separate

Just as you did.

Together

You died,

On the same day,

At the same hour:

You, Chang, of natural causes,

Followed by

You, Eng,

Who on seeing your dead twin,

Died, some say, of fright.

Scared to death, indeed!

When first I learned of this,

My reaction was:

Not of fright but of love!

I’m such a romantic!

Now, many years later,

Eleven years older than you,

Chang and Eng

When you died,

Separated from my twin

These 22 years,

I too believe you, Eng,

Died of fright.

Together,

Oh, so very much

Together for 62 years,

The mere thought of

Living alone,

A Lone Twin,

Scared you to death.

Together,                                                         

We, Jimmy and Georgie,

Thank you

Khop khun krap!

For being not afraid

To die

Together.

July 23, 2011

A Lone Twin in Siam: Thinking of Siamese Twins and Cats. And What about Siamese Twin Siamese Cats?

Siam gave the West Siamese cats and Siamese twins.  The original Siamese twins were Eng and Chang Bunker, known in Thailand as the Chinese Twins because of their Chinese father.  In the case of the cats, they originated in Siam.  But Siamese twins, of course, did not.  There are identical twins joined together physically in all parts of the world.  Siam then its other word for itself, Thailand, or officially the Kingdom of Thailand.  And the West thought it would be "politically correct" to start calling Siamese twins conjoined twins.  Why not Thai twins? How ironic that would sound, two twins tied together indeed!  But the cat world got to keep their Siamese cats. Anyway, at the basis of much of this is the fact that Thais don't speak English, do not share our poor alphabet.  Indeed, our alphabet seems poor with its 26 letters (5 vowels and 21 consonants) compared to the Thai alphabet with its 73 letters ( 42 consonants and 31 vowels)!  So you can appreciate the problem of trying to represent Thai sounds with only about half the letters.  This give rise to many different ways to represent the sound of Thai words using the English alphabet.   Oh, yes, and the Thai language has five distinct tones!

Here's a sentence in English translated into Thai:  Siamese twins are not all from Thailand but the Bunker twins were from Thailand.  ฝาแฝดสยามไม่ได้ทั้งหมดจากประเทศไทย แต่ฝาแฝด Bunker ถูกจากประเทศไทย  See what I mean?  Well we could all understand one word anyway!

The Bunker boys were born in Thailand in 1811 and died in North Carolina in 1874.  Chang died first of natural causes.  Moments after, Eng died.  Some say he died of fright.  I have my own ideas on the question, but I'll leave that for my next posting.

A Mystical Bond

Following is a copy of an article published by the Washington Post about Jimmy and me: