Wake Asia Wake - Part One - 3

No wisdom more canny than the folksome pantun’s peasant proverbials Wake! Monde Malais! Wake and note no Sultan whirls as a Sufi Nor no Sage of Singapore pouting platitudes can make you wake Wake! Malay! Wake! And settle your differences with neighbours over the bamboo fences for as long as you chain produce Kalashnikovs and cartridges others far-off will pride themselves on their need to divide et impera Wake! China! O! Wake! Give your less mighty neighbours not so much the helping hand as the glory of an example of standing upright free on equal feet you who had over the ages exported suzerain panaceas and no conquests Wake! O! China! Wake! Remember again Asoka the masterful Mauryas the golden era of the artful Guptas Kalidasa’s Shakuntala Tulsi Das Pannini’s grammar Bharatha’s Natya Sastra The Tolkappiyam the Cilappatikaram Manimekalai Ramayana Maha Bharatha Wake! India! Wake! Remember Lao Tse! Master Kung! and the all-doubt dispelling future perfect Yijing! Remember the finest mind-embroidered silk flowing down the ages in Wu’s Monkey skeins of thought calligraphed in the Buddhist mean! Wake! O! China! Wake! All is not full-figures all not burgeoning percentage growth if glory can be reduced to mere Middle Kingdom might! then bound feet will drag on face-down in seven kowtows Wake! O! Mighty China! Wake! And set your legions marching not to win wars or quell rebellions but to unclog your drains canals marshes and rivers let your lifeblood circulate nourished in lifegiving oxygen Wake! O! Asia! Wake! Whose art the better glints down the ages the gilded Samurai swords or those of Bashô and Issa in the carved rocky sands of the combed garden or those of Lady Murasaki in Genji Monogatari and Chikamatsu Wake! Sleepless Rising Sun! Wake! (Continued in Part One - 4)