MELAKA I
The weathervanes incline to the north,
peck in the right direction, keep disaster well away
from the Stadthuys made of brittle Zeeland stone,
and Christ Church, where you once were to marry.
In the red altar light of Jonkers Street still
gleam Dutch reals, vases from Canton,
daggers from Damascus, and the same versions
of your dildo, inlaid with mother of pearl.
The night has too much memory, too much rage.
I swallow my pill and lay myself out but hear
once more the drumming of your beak on the door,
still endure your aiming for my belly, and lower.
MELAKA II
Sloops rot in the dregs of the harbour,
on their bottom slack from coals for the cooking fires
instead of the Treasures of the East. Here history
smells of you, when you’d already stopped washing.
The same city, another life, just as treacherous
as you. In one of these rickshaws you showed me
the inlaid member, promised me more than your old man
would fear. I set you up to my heart’s content.
At night the sound and light show: clanging
of a fatherland’s carillon with the chanting Zilvervloot.
You hum along once more, push in my mouth.
I taste the wax. It never stops.
MELAKA III
The Portuguese Settlement darkens in the sun
that sets on this shore only hundreds of years.
Clots of oil, sticky sand. The breakers roll
out into the slime and blood of a wiser world.
On the platform the rounds of the children give way
to the dancing of older sisters, tireless mothers,
Asian fate in their Iberian-made-up eyes:
colourful costumes swirl, layer on layer is uncovered.
Here quite honestly we were together but you let me
down. Here, you too prop open your fold, your eyes must be
Western round. What was older: my desire or your hatred?
Not a word too much. Father, searing lap.
Publisher: In de Knipscheer, December 2003.
Book: € 15,00, cd (music by Dirk Stromberg): € 18,00. Set book + cd: € 29,50.
Postbox 6107, 2011 HC Haarlem, The Netherlands.
www.alberthagenaars.nl
www.indeknipscheer.nl
