A Borneo Trilogy in Verse
What remains
is not a moral but a residue:
that some powers pass
only when given,
that some truces are only as strong
as the next cough in a child’s chest,
and that the green keeps rising
whether we are ready to climb again or not.
The forest, as always,
keeps the rest.
III. MILK OF THE PALM
A Lyric Sequence
BOOK ONE: Return Through Fire
The Hunters Again
Mula
The same young men find them
at the river fork,
spears already level.
The one with the raised scar
across his left cheek
steps forward first.
Mula holds the wrapped shoot
high enough for the light to catch it.
“This is the new life of the Nibung.
Kill us and the sealed village dies first.
Kill us and the black veins
will reach your own water jars
before the next full moon.”
Her voice does not shake.
Nyali stands level with her,
the Mandau still at his side.
Her left wrist is bound
and darkening.
Standoff
A Young Hunter
“We carried the elders’ charge
to the end.
The war can wait
the length of one more night.
But do not think
this makes you clean.”
The points lower
not from peace
but from the colder arithmetic
of survival.
He is the first to turn away.
He does not wait
for the headman’s word.
Race to Batang Kail
Mula and Nyali
Canoes take the current hard.
The quarantine smoke
is thicker, greyer.
They reach the white barrier
at the hour when the light dies.
Faces press against the cloth
from inside—
thinner,
the eyes of some
already filmed yellow.
The child of the blue bead
is still among them,
smaller, but upright.
The Giving
Mula
The shoot is passed
through a narrow slit in the cloth.
Thin slices placed on tongues,
then boiled water,
then quiet.
The leader—older,
voice rough—
touches Mula’s good wrist
through the barrier.
His fingers are dry and hot.
“You walked the last distance
we could not.”
Her injured wrist
she keeps close to her side.
Waiting Night
Mula and Nyali
They camp outside the poles.
Inside, the coughing softens
by degrees.
By the grey time before dawn
three of the worst fevers
have broken.
Mula and Nyali sit near the fire.
Her wrist aches
in the damp.
He adjusts the binding once
without comment.
Neither sleeps much.
News Travels
The Runners
Runners leave
for both longhouses
before the sun clears the canopy.
The shoot takes.
The sealed will live.
The two who brought it
return carrying something
neither purely Buloh
nor purely Temedak,
and one wrist
that will not straighten fully again.
Quiet Between Them
Mula and Nyali
They sit where the river turns.
The empty wrapping rests
between them.
The Mandau lies
across Nyali’s knees.
Her left wrist
rests in her lap,
already stiffening.
She tests the fingers.
They answer, but slowly.
He watches
and does not offer to help again.
BOOK TWO: The Elders’ Choice
Summons
The Headmen
Both longhouses call them
under temporary cloth flags
the colour of old ash.
The headmen face each other
for the first time
in three seasons of rain.
Mula and Nyali stand
in the open ground between.
Testimony
Mula and Nyali
They tell the journey
without heightening:
the braided rivers,
the fever nights,
the three attempts on white stone,
the Mandau that changed hands,
the single new shoot
taken from the high crown,
the wrist that struck stone
on the second climb
and still will not straighten.
They tell of the child
who ate and kept her eyes clear.
Silence follows,
thick as the air before a storm.
The Old Grievances
Headman of Buloh
Salt jars.
Burned weirs.
A woman taken
three generations back
and never returned.
Each debt spoken
and left on the ground.
Then the headman of Buloh speaks,
voice edged with fatigue.
He sets the parang
across his knees again
as he did the morning he sent her.
“If two of our own
can carry the same living shoot
for the sake of the land,
can the land ask the rest of us
to set the spears down
for the length of one season?
I am tired of counting the dead
before the rains.
But do not mistake this
for forgiveness.
The old scores remain.
We only agree
to stop adding new ones
while the children still cough.”
Mula Speaks
Mula
“I did not stop hearing
Temedak drums as threat.
I only learned the sound
of black water in the lungs
is louder.
The Nibung offers its new life
to whoever reaches it.”
Nyali Speaks
Nyali
“I was ready to answer the drums
with blood.
I still can,
if the elders call.
But I have watched the sealed child
eat and keep her breath.”
The Decision
The Headmen
A watched truce:
no raids for one full cycle
of the moon.
Shared eyes on the rivers
against any return of the toxin.
The war is not finished.
It is only laid down,
still within reach.
Both headmen look
at Mula’s bound wrist
and say nothing about it.
The Bead Returned
Mula
That night Mula finds Nyali
at the edge of the joint firelight.
She presses the blue bead
into his palm
and closes his fingers over it.
“It belonged to a child
who stands because we both climbed.”
His hand stays closed.
The Mandau remains with him.
Her left wrist
she keeps to herself.
BOOK THREE: After the Serum
Separate Paths
Mula and Nyali
Morning mist still holds the river.
Mula turns toward Buloh.
Nyali toward Temedak.
They pause at the same sandbar
where the canoes first met.
No embrace.
Only the long look that contains
the three attempts,
the high crown,
the new shoot,
and the quieter drums.
They turn away
at almost the same moment.
Her wrist aches
with the motion of the paddle
she will soon take up alone.
The Longhouses Change
The Children
In Buloh the war songs
are sung less often
and with less heat.
In Temedak the young men
still practise the forms
but fall quiet
when the story of the third climb is told.
Children on both sides
now know the shape
of the palm that must be climbed
and the names of the two
who reached its crown,
and that one of them
returned with a wrist
that never straightened fully.
The Outlanders Leave
The Visitors
Months later
the white cloth comes down.
The visitors—thinner,
some still weak—
board their boats.
They leave tools,
a new compass,
and the spoken promise
to carry the names
of Buloh and Temedak
as the longhouses that chose
the living shoot over the feud,
at least for the length
of one season.
Letters in the Wind
The Path
Sometimes a hornbill feather arrives
bound with a strip of cloth
from the other side.
Sometimes a small packet of salt
or dried fish
left at the old meeting fork.
No names tied to them.
Only the knowledge
that the path through the canopy
has not entirely closed.
Mula’s Quiet
Mula
She sits on the longhouse veranda
at the hour when the light
turns the river the colour of tea.
The place at her throat
where the bead rested
still knows its weight.
The place at her side
where the Mandau once hung
feels lighter and stranger.
Her left wrist
aches when the rains come.
She has learned
to paddle with the other hand
when the joint refuses.
Nyali’s Quiet
Nyali
He carves a small Nibung
from soft wood
and sets it above the place he sleeps.
The Mandau rests beneath it.
When the drums begin once more
he will answer
if the elders require it.
But the taste of shared water
on the trail,
the heat of a palm
against a fevered forehead,
the cool glass of the bead,
and the exact sound
her wrist made
when it struck the stone—
these travel with him.
The Land’s Last Word
The Forest
The three rivers continue
their argument over stones.
The great Nibung on the cliff
sends up another new shoot
in the next season’s light.
Between Buloh and Temedak
two young lives carry a story
that is neither clean peace
nor simple war—
only the living green of the palm,
reached on the third attempt
under open sky,
one wrist that remembers the stone,
and the narrower path
that remained afterward.
The forest keeps the rest
in its long, green silence.
End of the Pale Crown.
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