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 “21st
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
