The Ballad of Tugasanan

I will sing you a song in the best way I can,

Please listen to me gently for I can no longer run.

The feeling that seethes inside of me refuses to be calmed,

I must tell the story now lest forever will it be drowned.

It is about an almost mythical place called Tugasanan,

With wide open spaces where mountains seem to be in a trance,

The place hides many magic for even until today

It manages to survive ever livelier in my memory.

And time has proven again and again,

That the best way to preserve whatever gain,

Is to store then in the cupboard of our memory,

For they are all there hidden for all eternity.

I will start with what I can clearly remember,

Those that are still vivid though years put them under cover.

The most intense is that of a yellow flower,

Whose fragrance and beauty even now still linger strongly in the air.

I had a brother next to me in the order,

Ours was quite a big family I often get confused with the number.

We carried an intense sibling rivalry we often had a quarrel,

Until we came of age but then he couldn’t go on any further.

My brother died through an assassin’s bullet,

In a place infested with rebels in the thickets.

They ended his life in one tragic night,

Their motives know only to them who keep them tight.

But let me go back to my earliest years,

In the plains of Tugasanan where grasshoppers saunter.

I knew the many secrets of the hills and of the sparse trees,

I was always there when the carabaos were bitten by the bees.

I was the swift one while my brother was a bit slow.

I could jump over furrows to capture the chicken’s prow.

Nobody could match my speed and I could run for miles

To buy some foodstuffs like mackerel when the visitors come by in piles.

I could climb the highest coconut trees with ease,

To gather fruits whose milk we love to grease.

But once I caught a glimpse of a yellow black snake,

Guarding a ripened jackfruit so nobody may take.

Is this a carryover of what took place in Eden,

When Adam and Eve through him did eat of the forbidden?

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia