Time for a Riddle

The Bersih rally, in all its failures and exaggerations, have left the Malaysian public dazed and stupefied in its aftermath ---not in its magnanimity, mind you. But in its sheer exuberance: never before had anything been done so much producing so little and even that, for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps Genesis (the rock group, not the biblical book) sums it up so appropriately in their epic opus :-

There’s no one left alive now, it must be a draw

So the black cap barons toss the coin to settle the score

                                                                                -   Battle of Epping Forest

Well I tell you what. It’s time to put back smiles and laughter into our lives once again. And what better way to do that than to do a little bit of cerebral exercise with a riddle put forth by Leman Pulut.

The following poem consists of a hidden phrase. While the solution is political, the problem statements (the stanzas themselves) are most surely not.  Can you solve it? Winners (for surely there can be more than just one) will get an honourable mention in future Leman Pulut’s poems. Just imagine: a thousand years from now when the proto human-martian hybrid were to look back and re-read all our literary giants’ works, your names will be entrenched in the poetry of Leman Pulut, then as a required course in “21^st century Earthly Poetry” taught in the Second Quadrant InterGalactic Polytechnic, Venus.

And come to think of it ... where can we obtain works of literary giants when they are no longer with us? Shakespeare is dead. Byron is no more. Whitman, Coleridge, Keats are long gone. And me, Leman (cough, cough) I am far from being well myself.

So go ahead and try. I have provided a clue on "My Seventh" there:- 

My first is in Sleigh but never in Pray

My second is in Slow but not in Slaw

My third is in Date but not in Rate

And I exist second in the days of Yore 

My fifth is in Mice but never in Lice

My sixth is a sore thumb in the word “Pryce”

And now I tell you, since you don’t know any better---

My seventh’s a symbol: never a letter

My eighth is in Three but never in Tree

My ninth exists twice in all Eternity

My tenth is in race but not in space

My eleventh is in both a He and a She

My twelfth is a frenchman’s pronunciation of Hay

My thirteenth differentiates a Flee from a Free

My fourteenth is in Love but never in Dove

My fifteenth is a ? in its entirety

My sixteenth is really a Dodo in camouflage

My seventeenth is first in Image, second in Mirage

My eighteenth exists abundantly in the past tense

Is not in Heavy, but definitely in Dense

And now that finally, Leman’s Ingenuity

Have glaringly put a toll on his readers’ sanity

Solve the final two letters in this here poetry,

By dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s !

 

 Answer:

           _ _ _ _ _ _  :   _ _   _ _ _ _ _ _   _ _ _   _ _  ! !

Selamat Mencuba!

Leman Pulut