ASIAN POETRY - Tropical Drift

maandag 12 augustus 2013

THE TEMPLE OF POETRY

I

Sharper than your angry, whispering voice
the night’s ray of truth strikes across the world
in my head, over the soaked cortex of language,
where the men who I am think they are sleeping.

Its azure light lays bare many milligrammes,
the drifting of Phytocalm and Temazepam,
forcing a path into the waving valerian
where the teacher on his blackboard calculates

the distance to the Southern Cross, to which
the temple is oriented. He analyses what the mother daily
made her son pray on four knees, and disclaims
every form of side effects, in everyone’s interest.

II

She illuminates his hand, already feeling for a stick,
the quicklime of his voice, his dry mouth
that assumes the form for the sweeter words
of the lover, gasping in tugged-tight sheets.

She opens his eyes full of faith, unfolds fists,
strips him of family, the meaning of names.
He tosses and turns, licks their nerves compulsively,
lies with his body that splits up in longing.

And transilluminates them: the mother with the coarse nipples,
the Lady on the medallion, the woman next door with
her hands full of soapsuds, the girl in the ruined park.
And you. He takes love as his love for less.

III

Deep, yet deeper, breaking anew in the most silent
of this building full of denials and fear,
it coincides with its origin, the poet’s head
where there’s raging and paging.

We’ve been tired for so long, want to dream on
but he bides his time beyond the ticking, the striking,
writes about both, unveils the secret of mother and son,
disguises and makes them up as father and daughter.

When dawn comes he leaves, leaves us his card,
the unpaid leave from the winter wounds at home.
We do not wish to quit the temple that should stand here
in the wood. Overgrown, untraceably, must exist.

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 juni 2013

SINGAPORE & MALAYSIA

SINGAPORE I: THE STRAIT

Returning over the ruffled water, I read
the story of this city, which betrays the past
as your father you, you me and I at night myself,
listening to the ships of my native town.

Then the hole in the Causeway opens once more,
we glide with sleeping legs into the depths
of a family current withheld too long,
where hard hands caress out from strange mothers.

‘The only thing they saw, worn out with nerves:
blacker holes in the black waters of the Strait.
The only thing they could hear inside themselves:
the growing droning of outboard motors.’

SINGAPORE II: PLANTATION

The priest cuts the tree wider open, dips
your fingers vexingly in the white juice,
naming in several languages at the same time the power
that feeds a stronger imagination than mine.

‘Men cursed and stumbled over weapons,
over each other, shouting for lamps.
And the rubber boats kept on coming,
they approached, relentlessly, like a judgment.’

I, staying behind in the old light, wrench
the knife, suddenly pulling out myself
to an unusually saturated time.
The blade still quivers in the trunk. You in me.

SINGAPORE III: KRANJI MEMORIAL

‘And before they had properly realised
what was happening, they were fighting with bayonets
in the marshy plantations, and the Japanese, laughing
with simplicity, were everywhere and nowhere.’

My pen jabs into time, jabs anew, time after time
but their conversation keeps on breaking down,
they remain uncles and aunts on a visit after the sermon
in our house full of fly-catchers, compulsory twilight.

The sight on the Strait at sunset
deepens for a moment into an insight: death
is not this damp field full of crosses, a knife
in the stomach; guilt within one’s own circle.

woensdag 8 mei 2013

MELAKA

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.

dinsdag 19 maart 2013

THAILAND - Bridge over the river Kwai

BRIDGE OVER THE KWAI I: KANCHANABURI

In front of us, made up of bridges stolen from
the Dutch East Indies, lies the bridge whose every
nail is still struck home in nights of old men.
With you wedged next to me

I hear them lie there listening to the hammering
on sleep. Orders ring out across the water.
In echoes the frail voice of grandpa, and the angry one
of his son who struck you with it till you bled

when you chose me. Since then the deceit:
a film, a poem, his heavy hand on mine
in your sex. And even deeper, the grinding
in the political trough. The grinding away.

BRIDGE OVER THE KWAI II: POINTS

The locomotive rusting on its base with no wheels,
your father the stray stoker, you on the shovel.
Japanese tourists dribble across the overgrown track,
that links east and west and him in us for good.

Bowing with innocence they ask me to take
a photo. They line up and wait, smile
with recognition. Unresisting, I shift their existence
in albums with Pat Pong, Clifford Pier and Borobudur,

to this camp, the swelling of the Kwai. He curses.
Much time will be spent drinking tonight, longer talking.
About grandpa’s grave in Bergen op Zoom, his Christ,
the evil that spills over the edge of the font.

BRIDGE OVER THE KWAI III: MUSEUM JEATH

Five countries in your name, to be found on no map.
I come from the last letter. You still do not know it;
no abbreviation separates marrow from callous skin, no peace
the woman in his sleepless hours from the one on my screen.

The visitors’ book flies open, pages flap
on bandages. I flatten them and write
grandpa’s name in my space. The monks nod.
They ask for material for their museum, keep on asking:

about your Mongol fold, about your father, a child
now down by the water, about our own children,
allegedly at home, and about Western sex.
I laugh too, but can no longer stay the pen.