IT IS NOT FAR AWAY

It is not far away the wind
that carts gloom over a countryside
suddenly overhung with clouds.

far away the hills are angry faces,
covered by tears from the clouded mirrors
of the sky, they are condemned statues.

walking over this the gloom stabs
judgement, coldness contracts muscles,
the hills become smaller, lost in grimness.

walking through forest reserves eavesdropping
on cicadas composing infinite love songs
the immutable mind inverts reasons--

deadness falls like far away branches:

this is no country for happy people

GRANDFATHER

The seventy six  years beneath his eyes
burst like rain, flood my earth with desolation;
his seventy six years have compromised my eyes
into a hardness  that grows one me,
the imprint of his frown I wear
without his laughter.

grandfather walks the bunds of seasons,
ploughing, sowing and harvesting years.
In drought stricken months
he wears his old age as lightly as his beard,
his smile transcends.

to be born from unlucky seeds,
a friend once wrote, is tragedy;
the curse flows unmuted, immutable--

only the hot stares of the gods persuade the proud.

gods bothered him,
but temples missed his sacrifice.
he found truth, relief, away from divinity,
spacing out years in padi fields,
unfolding particular nuances, lack of attainment.

like the padi stalk, once green, easily bent,
he grew with age, aged to ripened toughness
to resist anger, misfortunes of stricken years
with dignity, unpersuaded.

LALLANG

lallang does not sleep to man's command
burnt uprooted, undestroyed it flourishes well:
proud, disillusioned man walk on,
lallang lines your road to hell.

do not try to understand the lallang's moods

it sways calypso-like because it must:
do not think it's love you've found.
the lallang's cutting edge is lust.

let the wind cut its fingers on lallang
in the fields near the Bo tree:
thre is no lallang to cut oneself on
in a field of dead memories.

HINDU CREMATION

The pot is broken,
the thread of life runs out.
flames leap the sandlewood pyre
and your body laid without ceremony
burns not feeling the heat of fire.

only living flames eat flesh
and only the living love,
bodies devoured by fire.

your reward--
a coconut broken in haste
savagely by one who does not care
you left the fabric too bare
died too soon
to trace you in our lives.

your son carried the pot
he knows it's natural to die,
but your wife, she cries
who has known newfound loneliness.
later, to me she says, without tears,
he is no more who to me was all,
having promised never to leave
has gone, and left me broken,
a doll in a chid's hand--

we see death each day, die in turn,
some buried by priests, others burn.
this we know but pretend death far away
beyond the making of love and chidren.

this another lesson
I must learn.

BATU LANE

Pavements dirty as river broken bottles
grope their way to exits
careful of the stones they step around.
this is a city choking on streams coughing into backlanes gutters and pimps.
streets meet and greet a silence
broken by footsteps keeping time.

in doorways riveted sentry like
prostitutes watch the city life recline,
I walk the streets conscious of their smiles,
their indifference is timed to my retreat:
I know their price and hurry on
because that one's sweet.

these are pavements with no insidious intent
on these stones no rebels chalk dissent--
these are stones on which the evening lies.
(these stones have watched evenings die
and seen them rise again;
seen morning rage against the drains
and found the drains the same)

against the gurgling of drains
I have measured all your claims
and laid on corner sarhabat stalls
love and religion, my material gains,
I have sipped your memory
and found the tea too hot to drink,
left a laugh half way
because I stopped to think.

across the street the silhouettes are bright
I sit and watch them wait for pay,
think about your claims--
until my frozen laughter melts,

and though there are scars where wounds grow old
these are scars to scratch, not to foist upon the world.

FOR LAURA

and the hair that you cut
which the wind will now miss
and the wine in your smile
wich the rain will not wash,
what of them?
they are of the past, sleeping
when the risen day had fled.
for our waking and our sleep
there is only the bright sun
drying our intentions and our hurts:
what of them, when each morning
we compose our sorrows into faces,
walking down the streets of our hells
not cared for, or by, alone waiting
as the wind and rain will wait
for your hair to grow again.

CEREMONY

Because it could not be avoided
or because it was written on your forehead
you got married.

your initiation was before the fire
with water, tumeric oil
and the armpit smell
of a chanting priest.

crosslegged on the floor
the priest spread his hands
awaiting the customary tip
payable on such occasions;
his Sanskrit hymn fell
into calices of your brain
popping like seasame seeds
in a frying pan.

suddenly, you remembered and smiled.
there were other initiations, without fires
without oil and the armit smells of chanting priests:
a brown child's body naked in the rain,
the first fight and the salt taste of blood
and then the awakening of love.

the smile fades,
love is a burnt-out diary
a squirrel fixed in alcohol
squirming a little as you killed it.

the priestly hand is on your forehead
and in the priestly hymn a gentle threat.
the blessings on your forehead
run into eyebrows, you try to wipe it off
and find your hands tied to themselves
in your lap.

your hands have forgotten the use of fingers
they grow into tree-trunks, remote, motionless
to convince yourself you murmur
but I have fingers, these are fingers.

TIGERS

There are tigers in my dreams who prowl
the wastelands of love unfed, unwed;
beasts of evening with no remorse
feed as well on the living as the dead,
and having fed too well have found
their footsteps an empty sound;

there are people who in living will
dismiss tigers as the paper kind
and call to witness the fact
it was all my fault for lacking tact
and mis-interpreting the lover's game
you know so well.

there are moments of the night
when the moon becomes outside
the witness of another poet
of sadness, and poems in the dark
are absolutions, and the bark
of a stray dog, also in love
with himself, is enough reason
for weeping

CENOTAPH

They have built a cenotaph
to remember that you died.
long ago, heads on bamboo poles
adorned bridges, we remember
but understand memories can't be thicker
than joint projects.

we will come with abacus
to calculate among your bones
the veneration due you
in churches and mosques
you never prayed in, forgetting
that your bones are temples
you often walked in.

THE WAR

toay, as yesterday, the day before
the land stalks her enemy:
history does not lie,
the land is war prone
though the people are by nature
gentle, their souls peaceful.
it is the old instinct for blood
that detonates bombs, creates swamps
trains innocents to exult massacring
the next tribe, in the old hunt.

on another hunt
in Vietnam, today the killer ape
sacrifices to the old instincts,
crawling through this booby trap of a nation
into the daily news, lamenting the loss
of ceremonial destruction.