Yadus

Note: I don't know what the plural for this is.

The yadu is a Burmese rhyming, syllabic form of typically up to three 5-line stanzas. The form developed out of poetry composed by members of the Siamese (Thai) royal court captured during the 16th-century Burmese conquest of Siam. They typically have seasonal themes.

Though they're small, they have dense rhyme structure. The first 4 lines contain 4 syllables and the last line can have 5, 7, 9, or 11. Unusually, the rhymes “climb” through each stanza. There are two overlapping “climbing” rhymes and the final two lines rhyme with each other at the end. Rhyme “A” is the fourth syllable of the first line, third syllable of the second line, and second syllable of the third line. Rhyme “B repeats this pattern, but starts on the third line. The fourth and fifth lines end with rhyme “C”. That's all pretty complex, so here's a syllable-by-syllable demo (“x” is a syllable that doesn't rhyme):

x–x–x–A/
x–x–A–x/
x–A–x–B/
x–x–B–C/
x–B–x–x–C

I don't yet know if there are any more rules or traditions in this form.

See also the thanbauk, another Burmese poetic form with a similar rhyming structure.

Poems

1. 2025-04-30
   Party Carcass

   How perfectly
   The Party fails
   To plead its case,
   About-facing
   And racing to see what carcass Winter brings.

2. 2025-04-28
   flesh the thresher

   Don't trust your flesh
   To the thresher,
   Whose special care
   We beware since
   He bears the face of a bastard prince.

   ---

   The first yadu I've written. I dunno what the convention is for line-starts and punctuation. Anyway, it's tricky!