ASIAN POETRY - Tropical Drift

vrijdag 4 april 2014

JAKARTA

I: BATAVIA

Slides of old photos smoulder in the afternoon
made dark. Our shadows move
on the stiff fingers of an omniscient player
who strokes and puckers the skins as of old.

The ventilator makes the past on the screen
regenerate children-rich. I close my eyes but hear how
she catches her breath, as then, beneath that other sheet.
Lying stories. Pictures soaked in lye. Sweat.

Names like Koningsplein, Molenvliet and Rijswijk
disappear beneath the limewash of Japanese law.
Barbed wire rolls out. Canals choke with weed.
I aim, I aim; her son aims at me.

II: THE BABOE

Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Fuji. Neon beats
against the blackening blanket of clouds,
her turned-away face. Searching antennae
stand out. I caress her pleated skin.

The city sinks in the sea of kampongs, night
enclosing the verandah with a suck, making us
come together in the washhouse. The holes
in the zinc, a last cricket, elastic. I rise,

she remains seated, in tears, the souvenir
bared in her lap. Languidly, I kiss her white hair.
A blow, red that tears itself from the impact,
and as then the sudden rain, the unbridled water.

III: 1965

Paper rustles. A cockroach creeps from news papers
that remained new. Our landlady asks her father
something in Chinese. He shakes his head
almost imperceptibly, keeps on stirring his tea.

The year which our family never talks about
ripples open: rolled-up money, ampoules and lists
of names from Glodok. My new aunt embraces
him, stares for help. I am only ten but write

what I can: ‘She buried the books, undid her
hair and put on the white dress in the outhouse,
where they found her, and did not let her go again.’
Grandma is the small cup, tinkling in his hand.

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

zaterdag 8 maart 2014

BOROBUDUR

BOROBUDUR

I

Approaching from the calculated angle. Just
a quiver between us, a reflection of tri-
angular sails, fluttering in the arid wind,
the scraping of a bottom over time.

Desert sand scrunches in the ancient lens.
A couple more degrees and then the cosmic mountain
is submerged, her temple drifting like a lotus
on the reflection of will and matter.

I turn. At the burning bay of Avranches
the poet-father weeps for his drowned daughter.
Centuries revolved their fulness in our grief.
I was a young man and did not resist.

II

Gods rose with states and eventually declined.
Once more we clamber upwards past the lions.
The monsoons washed our blood off the stairs,
over the lowest terrace; that of envy, lust and death.

A white hand feels in the ashes for subsided verses:
fruit trees, elephants, judges, a small woman
with a spear, and touches broken strings, my love
for you. Harsh sounds of admiration, and incomprehension.

On top I take her in my arms, lift her up.
We laugh, become each other. Her frock leaves me naked.
I had to be your father and stroke everything smooth again.
States rise with gods, who trigger their decline.

III

I caress the veins of this breaking book, honey
flows out the stupa, covering name and form,
remembrance of a loss. Who cannot read
goes climbing round and seeks his place.

Do you recall that last night in our empty room
that stank of your incense, how we listened
to the mosquitoes? I was to go with you to the clinic,
but you screamed, you stuck your spear in me.

In this frail morning wind the speaking
ceases, spite rules in a smile,
many loves ago chiselled out of what
was devoid of any meaning.

vrijdag 7 februari 2014

THE DIENG PLATEAU

THE DIENG PLATEAU

The silted crater field contracts and expands.
Through invisible paths of refuse and stench
we had to make our way from temples to a Coloured Lake.
How much belief was ever thrown out here?

The women in the sulphur-yellow grass laughed
at your nudity, spat sirih at me.
The eldest, with the eyes of the lake, declined
the offer and made a downward gesture.

Staring in her blindness at my screen,
I translate so much later from what she muttered:
‘The lines. The intersections of the world.
Those of your wife. Respect her mourning.’

woensdag 1 januari 2014

IMOGIRI

IMOGIRI

Between the snakes, with their open-chiselled mouths,
we ascended, hand in hand, the Steps to Heaven.
We overlooked the island, under watchful eye and god,
how much did I love this country, so much stronger in you.

We were young, still concealing ourselves behind desire.
Our future stretched in my guileless member,
from your father to my mother. Meagre children.
The salve-box already emptied prior to birth. We burned

incense, cast coins, even strewed flowers,
but you had already been bitten; your wish tasted iron-sweet.
And I kept on strewing, do so every night,
until I hear their orders in mine and see you no longer.

donderdag 5 december 2013

PARANGTRITIS

PARANGTRITIS

Loro Kidul rules over this coast, over these words,
the green goddess of scales, foam and seaweed.
They invoke her with rice and jasmine, he said.
Sometimes a goat. More often sick babies, always girls.

We practised love on Thursdays, at the holy hour,
scouring each other in shell-gravel and father-sand,
believing what lovers greedily promise: my tongue
slid past reins, lisped fidelity, became hard

and sharp. Gongs began to beat, and there she
already began to rise, with bulging eyes, fangs and slime,
her sex a pregnant muzzle, sucking me
down, through the swell of your spirit.

vrijdag 1 november 2013

VOLCANO ASCENT

VOLCANO ASCENT

I

The horses snorted as we mounted
and put on the stinking, worn-out blankets.
We looked back no more: there were no other
roads to conjugate than this stony path.

Even your clinic vanished from sight,
I surrendered myself to a moonless night.
Countless stars fell from their own light.
The Southern Cross waxed enormously in might.

We climbed until below freezing point.
Gradually I felt a strong affinity with your father;
would keep silent about more than I know,
but hide a pen behind my shield.

II

The first watch over, we led the horses
on down. I stumbled; not on the worn-
out track into the crater but on how
he said that I lied in verses. About them.

The sea of settled ash had a hollow sound
beneath the hooves. I did not want to
cross the limit but he drives me, hailing
in showers of love, and stiffens me, in you.

We passed beyond our sleep, had children,
snarled into each other. Determined
to gain happiness we reached the staircase,
and climbed, as if he had never read them.

III

This was the oldest volcano of the three
in the crater. Sulphur caught my breath;
one day I would scatter him, with all his love
in that trunk full of camphor in the attic.

Far beneath us clouds streamed past.
You embraced me actually, behind his back,
stroked me out of this nameless night.
Reconciliation made room for resentment.

With the one writ after the other
we rose above his hardening words.
From within you I scarcely recovered from this view,
never from his oracle, the right of the officer.

dinsdag 1 oktober 2013

THE GODDESS OF LOVE

I

‘I have come from afar, on a stream
of endless loves.’ Hewn from the stone
that thrust into the fields like a tongue of lava,
she, breaking fire, opens her wrathful lips

and stares, with moss and muck on her eyes,
blindingly at me: the snatched acts
in parking lots and parks, lifts and luxury suites.
No matter where: hacking with asthma you rode me.

‘And you, you too came from afar, from a dream
of the tree of life. And of falling.’
Rasping in her throat, gasping from the horn.
I climb the stairs, debase myself. Approach her.

II

Each step strewn with tainted sacrifices, her
dhoti of white and black rotted to rags.
No breath of wind stirred the sooted palms.
I put my arms around her. You pulled the trigger:

long tongues of lust on a charred screen,
holy flickering above our heads. The school chaplain
with the thick glasses and the pointer.
Spit on the blackboard. The Act of Contrition.

He bent down over us, stammered with your voice:
‘Threaten me, betray me with your mouth.’
It is my profession. The snow falls virtuously,
on the sawahs, on the sacrifice. On my wife.

III

In you the parallel world pushes its way upwards;
this is no land of silk, under the sawahs smoulders
the fire with which you, after each time, arise anew,
alienate me from myself, scorch each man in me.

With rice I hallow your sex in which nothing may grow,
your womb that petrifies like the tongue with which I once,
unslakable with lust, ruled you according to the old laws.
Staring at the attic monitor I discern how much

my wife coincides with my image of you.
Lying and printing I cover you with faithfulness,
still your head does not succumb under my fruits,
still you open yourself: waiting in the garden of the clinic.