A Traveller’s Guide to the East Indies
by S. K. Kelen
1.
To arrive anywhere tonight
you travel a road lit only by fireflies
to towns whose names really
mean ‘tomb of a hundred martyrs’.
Invisible birds sing tinkling vowels
— words from a time
before history invaded.
Frogs roar louder and louder
kick-starting a generator.
Trees, pagoda, the moon
a shaking world in lagoon water.
Beware the regiments of the kangaroo!
Progress follows without emission controls.
Across, say, the Banda Sea or clouded mountain ranges
a world lost for ten thousand years
soon adjusts to ghetto-blasters and minibuses.
Western airliners overhead: missiles
that deliver foreign exchange.
Banyan trees grow sideways through the air.
Shouts and shrieks of barter and cash
amplify in a packed bazaar.
Crowds ebb and swell, laughing.
Trays of trinkets, batiks, sweets, fruit
and vegetables all laid out on small grass mats.
Beggars harangue pointing at their children.
A legendary pickpocket, Dusk, splashes red over the sky.
2.
In Sumatran cities transvestites caterwaul
after visitors’ fair skin.
Bus races over cliffs are a diversion
most prefer to miss, likewise a tiger
loose in a longhouse
though if one wears the brass ring a shaman prescribes
a tiger’s friendship is assured.
Indeed you’ll be invited home to its lair
and there smoke pipes of jungle grass,
receive potent amulets as gifts.
Kalimantan monkeys and wildcats screech like brakes
before a crash. Honey bears and orangutans,
chant laments, carry giant lilies to hideaways
as all the forests are felled
so throw-away-teak-chopsticks
adorn Japanese bowls.
Whilst animist priests fill an earth station’s dish
with rice, square rigged ships ply old spice routes.
On deck, gladly corrupted sailors swig arak
and drunk as baboons on durians their minds
swim off to the Roaring Forties.
Copyright ©: S. K. Kelen 2011
—————
The End
And that’s the End of the Poem
© Poetry Monster, 2021.
Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry.
Poetry Monster — the multilingual library of poetic works. Here you’ll find original poems, poetry translations, ancient verses, ballads and even folk tales.
Poetry Monster (or even The Poetry Monster) — is also an international multilingual community of poets and poetry connoisseurs. Join us:
Some external links: The Bat’s Poetry Cave. — Fledermaus’s poetry site. Talking Writing Monster. — the irreverent and irrelevant chatter on subjects both serious and not quite. A free for all board. You can scribble anything on it without registration (but it doesn’t let spammers in). You can even post your poems. Qwant.com. — a search engine from France. It’s an alternative because there are a few alternatives, like Bing, Duckduckgo, and Ecosia. And there is Yandex, the ultimate language-oriented search engine for the Russophone world. Commercial Links: Russian Commerce – the foreign trade assistance agency Other links: Poems and poetry in Russian (if you are reading this in English, as you obviously are, then you’d have to switch the language, the language switch is on the menu. More on languages)
