SONG*
An original Subanen song
by Rapinanding Promon
The late Rapinanding Promon, a singer and storyteller of renown, composed and sang this impromptu song at a gathering of neighbors to welcome visitors from abroad. Rhetorical devices enhancing the song include archaic words, metaphors and names of plants and objects added as decoration. The them of the songs is the singer's frustration and longing as she tries to establish friendship with a strange, puzzling family of foreigners who have suddenly appeared and taken up residence along the shores of he very river she lives beside. How to relate to these newcomers who have come from such a distant river? What to do with them?
1 It is difficult,* so troubling,*
2 For we are already on the path of friendship.
3 It is disturbing,* so perplexing,
4 For by now we fell a bond.
5 Whatever way we choose to turn,
6 How to decide what is good?
7 We have already become friends.
8 How can either choice succeed?
9 For now friendship has begun.
10 TO sever our ties* would be difficult,
11 To let go of them would bring us pain.*
12 Unless I control my thoughts,*
13 I am embarrassed,
14 I feel ashame.*
15 I fall so short of being equal,
16 I, so distant from your height.
17 The companionship now shared,
18 White flower of the likway,* utterly white,
19 Firm until death*
20 Shall this, our friendship, be.
21 For during all this many nights,
22 Not one quarrel has sprung up,
23 Not a discordant word to judge.
24 So I am unable to decide,*
25 For rapport has now begun,
26 Scarf of silk,
27 And I do not know what path to choose;
28 We are now joined as friends.
29 Not adjacent to our soil
30 Is the river* called America.
31 It borders not on our land,
32 But on the soil of the gods.*
33 Suddenly they reside among us
34 Inhabiting the same soil,
35 Already living together
36 As neighbors next door.
37 Aguu, how painful, Friend,*
38 I cannot comprehend it;
39 My confusion only grows.
40 Aguu, Dear Friend,*
41 I am unable to resolve it;*
42 I am troubled more and more.
43 We swim up the river Margos,*
44 Winds of distress blow in our face.
45 Why must it be this way?.
