Perahera festival

Perahera kandy’s
Circus
The toothed festival event
Decorated elephants
And dancing all well mean’t
Hot and heavy torches
Fuelled by kerosene
Barefoot and barebacked
And whats more its obscene

How they treat their elephants
Chaining their legs they
Are restrained and its dangerous
To expect them to walk all day
The great strain on the back and ligaments
Its a price too high to pay
And with heavy paraphanalia
To be carried everywhere
You can see from looking in their eyes
They are suffering despair
Three or four men
On their backs
A fate now worse than hell
Man is an inhuman sod
Under some awful spell

The roads are heavy going
But this is what we do
As their skin in scraped
Sick or not
We are never true
They walk and limp drenched in sweat
And sometimes blood does drip
But its a duty and they must try
Of face a great big whip

Its their duty they must carry on
The work is set in stone
The cruelty the agony
Every pace they groan
This is how they treat the elephants
Sri Lankan ought to know
This is not the way to do it
Despite whatever show