| Robert James Berry WEST MALAYSIA robert_j_berry@hotmail.com MAPS I leaf over soft uplands Follow fanning estuaries Into pale lakes Imagining tides that chisel isthmuses Towers of ice Dark gravelly tongues of glaciers Moving beside monstered sounds, Archipelagoes that unfurl into infinity. Tacking these crenellated coasts Where the gray blobs are boisterous ports The broken lines Shipping routes nosing out into open water Into latitudes licked by sun, At last my eye rounds a spit of sand Sculpted by gales, And up along the choppy harbour Into my childhood, Whipped by the wind. SERENADE My mother hums veena music Daydreaming over her belly. My fingers are a Wonderfully light touch Testing the crimson-domed sky. In my wide inland sea I am heir to incalculable dreams, At home in a heartland Of galloping sound. The red horizon widens with visions. When old men grow muddy with time, And tire of miracles I quicken like a tiny fish Treading water Making my own ebullient music, Fleet rippling allegros My mother feels. SEEING THINGS The wind moved by some memory Moans in an ancient language, Through a dark sea of tangled trees. The road is swallowed in shadows. Shadows are like Gnawed bones in the dark, Wolves of coming winter Hewn from the silent monsters in men. When the road wends up Into ice-fanged mountains Venomous winter Crawls in the sheer screes. Here it is colder than The graves of all lands. Blizzards have blasted tumbled stones Into terrible heads Leaving them to guard the pass, Ailing faces staring from the snow. Only on the lower slopes The years lie thicker than silence. As the road twists down into wind-writhen firs Licked with mist So the mind follows. Marching a hazy trail That winds off into ochre lowlands At the edge of vision. QUARTET Together the players sway Bows moving molto adagio Shaping long plangent phrases Resounding with old memories. The piano's sostenuto is A towering country of sound Then solo The cello tells intimate tales. The roots of the world stir When all the players reach crescendo. Like a bonfire of burning creation. Softly spoken Spellbound below the stave, The viola is working witchcraft. Sharp as the taste of love Are the strings of the violin As they fade into ineffable silence. CAUSEWAY Fog lingers like dragon's breath Over these gruff headlands Where the sea cries balefully, Pounding with giant salt fists The granite coast. A storm is running, spitting mouthfuls of sky, Enraged with the unclean monsters of history Drenching us in the giant past. The whole country pitches On a stomach-tossing sea. The gales' legacy Is a cleansing silence. Tides lick in rock pools Ruled by claw-fisted ghouls. An uneasy peace is struck. Before the red hand of sunset Bloodstains the centuries Where we have always toiled In our rune-haunted homes. © All Copyright, 2000, Dr.
Robert James Berry. |