An Elegy For Delly

Van Biak Thang

11 April, 2007

A distant knell echoed ‘long the horizon
Like a whisper that blows a hollow horn;
Tears dropped and hearts ached in silent pain
Over a tragic brutal loss of a seven-year old girl,
So sweet and lovely, Delly Sui Hlei Par.

She loved to play, pray and her stories share:
How she wanted to be free and live to care
When the family’s to the States fly in hours
All her dreams but turned into a nighmare
Vanishing like a puff of smoke into breezy air

Her delicate hands severed and body decayed
But a pair of her slippers, safe and sound, aside lay
Why a life, so innocent and hopeful, deserve this
whilst even squirrels ran around in the twilight?
O what an act, so cruel, vicious and delibrate!

Her parents had then to flee the regime’s country
In desperate search of peace,freedom and safety
Away from the junta’s heartless oppression,
Torture, forced labour and religious persecution,
And at last to Malaysia as an unwelcome refugee.

A nation worldwide sung a mournful dirge, untimely,
To a breathless daughter in grief and agony
Lying helplessly between a land of fear and cheer.
Though no tombstone yet be found in a foreign’s hand
Her name has well been written in her dreamland.