Violetta Simatupang

She lives on the same planet as ours
Small, round, full of holes.
Then comes one beautiful day
Something went: stroke!
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Yamuna Vihar was sun-roasted
Smoking roofs and wailing asphalt everywhere
Delhi Pustak Parikrama sobbed on a yellow plank
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Lying in her off-white bed
wherein words left unsaid,
living in several worlds
wherein none is possibly absurd,
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Rosie is Ross.

She is my self-conscious boss. Ambitious. And obvious.
Talking to her at home words get caught in my throat.
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Paradise isle, surrounded by a sea-like marsh
a gliding boat was swallowing
saline and brackish water in turn
roots clasping like gigantic claws
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Ten years agone a fine looking young man with brown skin like mine
and brown eyeballs like mine. So brown the paddy fields mud glow
on our Island of the Gods.
Plunged his hands below the soil growing lifespan to rice and cranes
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Leaping from the maroon sofa, Ruth kissed me
the thief of time snatched it too soon
from my weary mouth
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Come on Kitari,
Apologize. Your shoe touched its feet

A bucketful of water you threw by the well
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My lover wasn’t born mouthing a silver spoon
Thus raindrops fell
Not into a pond
But a narrow gutter of greenish water
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(Gliding with the clouds)

swept by the wind’s soft caress
gazing down to the colourful nadir
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the long vestibules know not what the word ‘keep’ means
white figures toing and froing
a bulky man, a daughter pushing a bier, a mother in four shrouds
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whilst waltzing towards the purple moon

here's a bowl of lavender tea
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I watch the 1,2,3,4 o'clock wild-eyed views

hear the 5,6,7,8 o'clock news
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A week ago the old fat house-lizard, mother’s chat pal, was found lying blue behind her closet. In her grief mother buried it near a clay pot. Poor mother. She now had no living creature to talk to. I should have been there instead of being so muddled at work that it was too late at night to greet her.
Occasionally I caught her nattering with the lovely moon.

One dawn a star took leave to the earth, leaving a misty cloud heavy with traces. For a while mother’s sunken eyes were stared at me. I was startled. Princess...princess... princess..., ” her rigid voice ripped the debris of dreams as if she could no longer stand the world; all the while sealing my too undoubtedly regretful tears for death. The spattering flames under the boiling water and a pair of cups were the last witnesses. Mother never drank it. Her treasured rocking chair was getting older now with no occupant save a bleeding heart and the sheer prudence of an army widow.
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