A Soliloquy on the Anga

Listen to: A Soliloquy on the Anga

The people of this village, bound in time
And place to earth, wave and greet me smiling,
And hold me warm in courtesy's embrace.
Well-favoured by distance does this village lie,
Amid their valley's cool, grass-scented air.

The fertile valley stretches broad and long;
As morning’s rain gives rise to perfumed mist,
With hints of lazy smoke from village fires,
The voices of the village men returned
From hunting, carry laughter through the hills.

Yet what strange practice I witness here
Beneath the sandstone hill-top's weathered brow;
For watchful dead as if in judgement sit,
With skin and tissue dry, like aged parchment,
And watch their living kin through sightless eyes.

Their bodies have their kin preserved by smoke,
As smoke preserves their memory, good and ill,
To rest upon a fragile, timber seat.
Loved ones recall their lives, their loves and strife,
And, as if living still, are they consoled.

Oh, when will people grieve, if in their eyes
A loved one now preserved by smoke still lives?
In this valley beneath the shadowed hill,
Where all manner of living things must die,
I wonder at our natural death's decay.

The smoke can but delay a body’s rot;
In that time can one see life through death's eyes
And so be guided from this life to death?
How different is that view of life from mine,
Who sees death as final, my end complete.
Location: Aseki Province, PNG

Comments

Anonymous said…
Wonderful, it must bring memories of being in that place to be able to write with so much elegance and thoughtfulness
1 September 2024 at 14:44
Simon Beechinor said…
Yes indeed, it was all the more remarkable for being there entirely by accident... Since I visited, tourism (albeit limited), has become a thing, so perhaps they've been replaced by fibreglass effigies by now!
2 September 2024 at 08:30
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