How To Grown Silence... Poem by RIC BASTASA

there was this place she bragged about
in the hinterland and we have to take a ride
for seven hours from Jakarta and she keeps on
talking that it is where silence is grown and
people who went there once wanted always to come
back

she pictured it: dinner by the river where lotus
are flowering beside it reeds and more reed and
shades of old trees where leaves fell and float
on the water which is so still like a mirror to
the moon

when we arrived there we were so tired that we
sleep together and food shall soon be served but
we postponed it

and there with her sleeping beside me her head
on my shoulder my arms wrapping her i know what
she means: how to grown silence in its loveliest form.