They are Shooting Monks (in Mandalay)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2020
Summary
(Apologies to Rudyard Kipling. In memory of Michael Aris, who made me understand.)
By an old Rangoon Pagoda with no view towards the sea
There's a Burma girl a-standing and her name is Saan Suu Kyi
She is deaf to palm trees singing and what the bells do say
As the Monks go on display –
“Go you forth you Burma soldier, go you forth to Mandalay
You have finished with Rangoon
Go you forth to Mandalay”
Where the Monks are on display
Can't you hear the bullets flying from Rangoon to Mandalay?
Can't you see the corpses piling
Where the flying fishes play
And where dawn comes out reddened outer China crost
the bay?
They are shooting Monks
Why does the headline disturb me?
Is there a difference between shooting
monks, shooting students, shooting workers and the
occasional poet who dies to make the headlines?
I know of Buddha dancing
But Buddhists marching?
Is that the provocation?
Their petticoats were orange and their heads all shaven clean
And they chanted with the people
No more price hikes on the petrol no more hoarding of benzene
As she stood there waving by her window to the thousands underfoot
An’ a wasting hopes and yearnings for a life beyond the loot
Bloody tyrants made of iron
Bloody tyrants made of steel
On the Road to Mandalay
Where the Monks are on display
Perhaps it should have read: they are even shooting Monks
Buddha dancing
Buddhists marching
Bang … bang bang
Are they marching to Washington's drum?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- From Around the World in Eighty DaysThe India Section, pp. 86 - 88Publisher: University of South AfricaPrint publication year: 2014