INDONESIA

jpenha@cbn.net.id

MASQUE

 I see a sadness
 in your vastness
 doomed to tangle yourself
 like shoelaces flying
 from a kindergartener's sneaker.
 What steps dare you so?
 Or am I alone
 afraid for your future
 when I see your ornaments
 outshine your presence.

   ONE VILLAGE WAITS

 At the bridge above the bend
 of Batang Toru, the lower river,
 in the Sumatran village
 since 1965 called Si Pette--
 One Waits.


 At the bridge
 above the Batang Toru rapids
 the neighborhood children
 tiered in trees
 like spider monkeys in their jungle
 heard their fathers
 called Kommunist as
 the word came to the village
 to mean men hammered
 and hacked by the new order
 of things. Ding
 dong the witches
 dead in Batang Toru.

 Divided they fell
 like afternoon showers
 usually do into the lower river.

 Now when the children bathe
 at dusk in Batang Toru,
 they hear voices in the babble:
 one waits.

 No, spider monkeys would have objected
 in striking discords.

 Now when the children walk
 the jungle at night,
 they hear voices in the breezes:
 one waits.

 The children gaped silently,
 retreated more surreptiously than simians
 and whispered screams
 to those they found at home
 alive. Their aunties held the stories
 as tightly as crackers
 in old cookie cans
 lined with newspaper.

 Now when the aunties care
 for the ill and the orphaned,
 they hear voices in deliria:
 one waits.

 Nor did these survivors open their mouths again
 to eat the fish of the Batang Toru.
 Strings and hooks hung
 dry.

 Now when the aunties beat
 the grain at dawn,
 they hear voices in the threshes:
 one waits.

     One waits
 as it watches
 those who net in the gorge
 and dine on the fish
 that fed on its guts
 and hearts.

     One waits
 for the souls of its selves devoured
 to rise against their hosts
 to be devoured again
 by time

 and the rapid river

 of one village waits.

 EARLY LIGHT

 Are you awake?
 No . . . not really.
 Are you asleep?
 Why do you ask?
 I’m awake.
 Go to sleep.
 I can’t.
 I can.
 Please don’t.
 Why not?
 If you stay awake with me . . .
 Yes.
 I’ll sleep.

 THERE ARE THOSE TO WHOM PLACE IS NOT UNIMPORTANT

 LINES FOUND AROUND "THERE"
 IN GRANGER’S INDEX

 There are seeds within the tide:
 this unknown dust that is near us.

 There is a meadow, a place
 where the grass stands up two feet.
 There is a bale of hay,
 a charm
 in footing slow across a silent plain
 where blows a cold wind today;
 today, a wind like a bugle,
 a grey wind, wails on the clover.
 There is a green hill.
 There is a blue sky.
 There is a blue star.

 There is a tree, by day
 native in Turkestan
 stood in the ground:
 a Willow, and he was very old.
 There is a flower sprung of a tree,
 a flower within my heart.
 There is a Garden in Her Face,
 a place where love begins and a place
 where the rose was.
 There were never strawberries.
 There was a sunlit absence.

 There is a bird,
 a thrush that sings in a shadowy wood.
 There is a hawk that is picking the birds out of our sky.
 There were three crows sat on a tree.

 There are the Alps. What is there to say about them?
 There has been a light snow,
 a light in the snow,
 a little lightning in her eyes.
 There are these small cliffs.
 There is this cave.

 There lies a somnolent lake,
 a stream that rises,
 a river that rose.
 There was a jolly fat frog that did in the river swim O,
 a cool river,
 a great river this side of Stygia.

 There are too many waterfalls here.
 There was a bridge that Rozinante would not cross.
 There was a little turtle.
 There was a lizard kept me company.
 There was a serpent who had to sing.

 There the black river, boundary to hell.
 There, in that other world, what waits for me?
 There

 is a pain—so utter
 there’s no way out.

© All Copyright, James Penha.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.