Details |
Rhyme
|
Malayan Tigers are listed as, critically endangered
and they used to be known, as Indochinese Tigers
They live is in the Malay Peninsula, of Thailand
in their habitat of forests, grasslands and wetlands
They have threats of poaching, for the illegal black markets
as China will not put ban, on the use of tiger parts
and deforestation for development, for the human ferrets
to construct roads, logging and agriculture, just breaks many hearts
Habitat destruction, has forced tigers into human territory
and there have been many Tiger killings, with human dissention
and tigers kill humans and livestock, because they are predatory
as their lives are desperate, to not end up with extinction
|
Details |
Dramatic Verse
|
Part Two
shrinking you again within our ruwai
though always fearing, always cringeing at the thought
of the day
when his brothers would come in numbers
bearing fire-spitting engines
over the sodden earth
in search of you
« My people… my PEOPLE…
Will avenge this dastardly deed…
This foul and bloody deed ! »
I have not slept these past years
And Anjang heaves murmuring in a strange tongue
I cannot understand
« But then, do not forget you murdered too
for someone else’s cause
down from 5th Corps at Lasah !»
« Remember what you wrote your parents :
‘Now if I become a Temiar
by marriage
there would be no barriers.
I would be party then to their most intimate secrets.
TOHAT NA MED: SAKA SENOI SELAMAT !’ »
NOTES
Patrick Noone, a British anthropologist, discovered the Ple-Temiar tribe living isolated in the jungle highlands in the State of Perak on the west coast of the Malayan peninsula in the early nineteen-thirties. The tribe was so cut away from civilization that the notion of crime did not exist in their society. The shaman leader of the tribe welcomed « Pat » and gave him his sixteen-year old daughter Anjang in mariage. She was betrothed to Uda, a young Temiar. Unable to bear the separation, Uda murdered Pat - the very first crime in their history. This poem – one of the cantos – commemorates this event.
Glossary of Ple-Temiar terms
ruwai : group protective soul of the Temiar community.
gunig : the guiding soul of the Temiar shaman which often takes the shape of a tiger.
buloh seworr : (Malay) the best of the blow-pipe bamboo to be found on the slopes of the high mountains in Ulu Perak.
Tohat na med : saka senoi selamat ! : Our Master is well : the Senoi country is safe !
saka : each Temiar community’s agricultural domain.
halak : shaman
rokap : a tree whose branches are especially tough.
ladang : the land on which shifting cultivation is practised.
chinchem : the Temiar shaman’s dance learnt in a dream from his gunig (cf.).
© T. Wignesan, 1977 (from the collection: tell them i'm gone, 1983)
|