Malay History

Ripples are longings carved upon the water.

Which is why they slither ashore,

unstoppable as sharp-eyed snakes.

Which is why they dream of soils,

resolute as the creeping roots.

Ripples too are our veins,

pulsating and flowing with our blood and fire.

We once found a void vastness and chiseled it

until images and figures came out of it.

Raise your heads,

see what our hands have wrought!

Ah, there are Sumerians and Egyptians everywhere.

Ah, there are Iberians and Greeks everywhere.

Ah, there are witnesses to quests and conquests everywhere.

Birds sing in our tongue,

hence a language now inherited by the wind,

hence a language now engraved in the wind,

hence a language that is now brother to trees and flowers.

A language of many voices—

the gentleness of a mother’s lullaby,

the elegance of a bard’s songs and a lover’s croons,

the lightning and thunder that worried the conquistadores,

the people singing to identify themselves.

Build pyramids and catacombs? No! We do not have to.

There are no desiccated carcasses here

and nothing rotten to conceal.

Everything here is immune to dust and sand;

and here we have sun that is kind to grasses and grasshoppers,

and here too we have rain that is kind to farms and farmers.

Instead build huts, and let the wind come in

to recount what it gathers from the mountains.

Children should be nourished with milk, rice, wisdoms, and legends.

Children’s mind should be peopled with images and figures we sculpted.

Ripples are longings carved upon the river,

and they will not stop creeping and slithering,

because there are so many banks and lands,

to anchor a dream.

Papa Osmubal