I
The more we searchingly approach, the more
the kampong becomes drenched in guilt.
In a hangar there are formulae on the blackboard,
none of which applies to his great deficiency.
Your father pulls you towards him, as you me.
We rebound in the triangle of love, each
in turn the basis, always the same one
master of the repeatedly counterfeited past.
Pulu Brayan was perhaps another place,
the school no barracks, you not his daughter,
and he himself some other gentleman.
All the children lead us to the deserted square.
II
We stand on imagination’s rim
where not only what really happened is repeated
in the glittering of a sword that time,
a present of well-thumbed stories, slashes open.
Once, confined to my sick-bed, I devoured other books:
little Monki played in palm trees and temples,
marines waited in shrubs to be coloured in. I knew
that I would come back again some day. And how I came:
your mother had to climb too often into their lap, you caress
your daughter. Your own father was tortured, you lash the son
that I try to become with your forked tongue.
The sun, directly above, now burns colder than ever.
III
The present, now incurable: ‘Ietsjie, nie,
san, sjie, go,’ he suddenly murmurs, he counts more
floggings, less and less mothers standing waiting,
and it just doesn’t work - and never will.
Is that why, the very same night, I push you
in vain to a simultaneous climax, command you
until my ears begin to sing, the mosquito net falls,
you’re soaked in a sweat as sour as his?
An old man stops being old and being a man,
the dying child in him takes over: ‘Here the flag
used to wave, here mummy had to keep on bowing.’
On the square frail women now are crushing rice.
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
