WEST MALAYSIA

robert_james_berry@yahoo.com 

Forbidden Rites

Stars are setting over
The island.

She rocks on the rip tide
Making her own music.

We shall haul our canoes
Up the west beach

Come to the clearing
Where stories are cold,
Where the great fires spat.

Dumb and broken-nosed, our gods
Gawk obscenely from the jungle. 

Listening in the hollow silence
For the hammer of drums

I can taste the sweet meat
Of my enemies.

Ours was a great pride.

Now creepers smother it
I sorrow after those bolder times.

The Rain Falling

I am looking at the green bamboo
The rain falling

In a steady thrum of peace
On the shining wet window.

Standing at the gate of my house
I shall wash my face in this rain,

Wash my toes in these warm puddles
Of the monsoon.

I shall stare into the still heart of the afternoon
Till it grows round with dreams. 

Mountain

Down into owl-shrieking woods
The dark abrupt peaks cast shadows.
Firs hiss, the wind soughs

As light totters over the snow
Etching acres of silence

Before day grows rowdy with 
Geese going north.

Up high, where the snowline 
Hardens like cement

A bloodless sun 
Licks anemically at land
Lean as a sick wolf. 

Under this southern sky
Under these magic mountains
I have torn hours off the bones of time

Drawn from my well-deep hunger
This dawn music.

Deep South

Wind sharp as a marlinspike
Noses the coastline.

Under the spell of winter
Smell of sea mist
Clutching us,

Tide frozen in the hammered maw
Of the bay

The world white silence.

Look out. No island ruckles the horizon.

Nothing to salve the massive
Remote, silent distance

Except the stars whirling overhead.

Deeper south
The cold becomes 
A grinding tongue of ice,

Snow towers of Antarctica
Roll the plunging swell

And the sun flickers, 
Snuffs under the skyline
For all time.

Canvas

Out of an unidentifiable darkness
A painterly smudge of sadness
To start a baleful masterpiece,

A mortified fresco
Hung lavishly with grief.

Already the scene sheds
Pointillist tears,

Its secret revolution of colour
Hardening in sunlight.

As the forsaken palette runs
Coheres to a concrete art
A prodigious thrust of fury

Slowly, the canvas becomes
A magic room of words. 

Equestrian Statues

The deep breathing grasslands
Boundless as the act of time

Are apricot-skied at sunset.

As evening foals darkness,
A sudden fury of scarlet horses
Canter the horizon

And the wind yearns
To slit open the husk of night
That is thick coir matting. 

In an unstarred dark
Strong as the hook of the sea,

Equestrian statues are 
Rearing stones on the threshold of sleep,

Snorting monsters
Pawing a forbidden territory
Before our time,

Playing the supernatural sky
Like clamouring almighties

Before becoming still

Granite stallions drinking water
As Aquarius rises.

© All Copyright, 2000, Robert James Berry.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.