A native Andamanese song collected, edited, and translated in 1923 by the anthropologist C.M. Bowra in his work, Primitive Song. The poem is an interesting example of early poetic form, characterized by rhythm instead of meter, organized into specific segments and obsessed with a single idea. The poem initiates a situation (a pig on a skewer), and slowly builds to a frenzied, repetitive pitch. Segments, marked in modern poetry by fixed meter or line-breaks, are formed by the repeated phrase and variation.
From the skewer O the blood O on my skin dripped down,
On my skin kept dripping down,
From the pig O on my skin kept
Dripping down, from the pig O on my skin kept
Dripping down, from the pig O on my skin kept.