Kanda-kanda bangalhis

"Whose coconut tree is this?"

Asked the Bodu-sarudaaru with a hiss.

"It’s mine," said a man, "and nothing is amiss."

"Will you give up the tree for this?"

"No" said the man, for it was his,

"Give it or not, it would be kanda-kanda-bangalhis"

* * *

The ancient Maldivians did never fight

But slew seven kings in one night

And ruled the land with a might.

* * *

A child who danced for Mohamed Farid

And loved to play and feed

Did become today’s Abdul Rasheed.

* * *

The Greek philosopher Aflaatoon

Came to the world as a boon.

He once saw a racoon

And found in it the entire nature’s Kaanoon.

* * *

The blind man caught a crow by night,

One that was missed by the daylight.

* * *

Milk is often withheld from a child who never cries

And attention to a man who frequently lies.

* * *

Simmie the cat in the sun, on a Sunday noon

Lay warming himself like a quarter moon.

* * *

A "Parrot Scholar" learns by rote

What’s in a book or any Quote.

His pen is ever ready to make a note

Of any sound that comes out of a teacher’s throat

* * *

The scratching fowl finds no particular appeal

In a diamond that turns up with an onion peel!

* * *

Darkness is dispelled by a light that’s bright

But a fire is never put out by dynamite

Two wrongs never make a right

Thus, is hatred countered by love, not a fight.

* * *

Author’s annotation: "Kanda-kanda-bangalhis" was Maldivian child’s idiom of the early to mid-twentieth century and meant cutting down a tree with vigour and felling it with much noise. "Bodu-sarudaaru" literally means "big-foreman". The particular Bodu-sarudaaru in Abdul Rasheed’s verse was an actual person, an over-zealous employee of the Maldives government in Malé in the mid-twentieth century, and the verse was based on historical fact. Mohamed Farid, a distant cousin of ours, was our paternal Aunt Tuttudon Goma’s and our first cousin Fowziyya’s brother-in-law, later to become Sultan and reigned until the monarchy was abolished in 1968. He was a frequent guest at our house until he died. "Aflaatoon" was the Arabic, and Maldivian name for the Greek philosopher Plato. "Kaanoon" literally means Canon or Law