Member Poem

Drum beats in the forest,

Break the silence of the night,

Rumbling and tumbling

sounds pierce the air,

It is set time,

Time to awaken the spirits,

It is due time,

Time to summon the spirits

for cleansing of the land,

The beats are accompanied by incantations,

The chief priest is at his best,

The village has been going

through worst of times,

Evil occurrence has seized the day,

The land has failed to yield in abundance,

Strange ailments have

swept through homes and families,

Worry and anxiety have pitched their tents

in the minds of the people,

Despair and despondency have taken full course.

We hear the sounds in our homes,

The sounds come to the village,

They take their passage to the shrine,

We shudder in fear,

We tremble in dread,

Infants cling to their mothers,

Fathers frantically pacify everyone,

The drum beats take a different turn,

The chief priest chant mystical words,

They are here,

They have been summoned,

The spirits have come to do their bidding,

The drum beats and incantations stop,

There is dead silence.

We hear songs of eulogy and adulations,

The dialect is too deep to comprehend,

The drum beats take another turn,

The dawn of a new era as they connote,

Why do our ancestors believe

so much in taboo and spiritism,

This belief has been passed down

from one family line to the next,

They tell us culture is too weak to stand alone,

Frail to stand alone without

the twin support of taboo and spiritism,

I am of a divergent view,

I am of a different opinion.