The Malay Pantun: Post-Colonial Writing

La capinera's wintering pieces of tropic tunes The garden warbler's echoes of dark melodies Post-colonial poets return by summering fortunes Learnt by rote as sacred Oxbridge duties Note The French "pantoum" may be modeled on the Malay pantun, or at least it may aspire to, but it does not adhere to its fundamental compositional criteria. For the original prototype, cf. T. Wignesan, "The Poietics of the Pantun" in Journal of the Institute of Asian studies, Vol. XII, n° 2 (Chennai), March 1995, pp. 1-15; reproduced with corrections in T. Wignesan. Sporadic Striving amid Echoed Voices, Mirrored Images and Stereotypic Posturing in Malaysian-Singaporean Literatures. Allahabad: Cyberwit.net, 2008, pp. 49-67. (c) T. Wignesan - Paris, 2012