The Lady from Lombok

‘My husband beats me,’ she murmured,
eyes downcast, to Bill in reply to his praise
of her gentle beauty. Perhaps she thought
to reject an advance? I never saw a mark
on her delicate face, nor a bruise
on her dainty arm, and she didn’t move
like one with hidden injuries; she was lithe.

Nor did she, later, reject his advances.
I wasn’t with him on that trip. But I knew.


Now also forms part of my 'Remembering Bali' series.

Learning

What did I learn?
Perhaps that we don’t learn —
killing the things we love.

My stepdaughter visited Kuta
just last week. Gentle people,
she remarks, but expensive taxis!
‘No bemos?’ I ask. (Little buses.)
In my day they were everywhere.
She never even heard the word.

‘Wish I’d known you were going,’ I say,
‘I need some new sarongs.
The ones I bought in ‘73
have finally all worn out.’ ‘Oh!’
she says, pleased, ‘I got you one!’

That’s one thing I learned from Bali:
in summer I live in sarongs
(thirty-seven summers now).

I open the paper and read of a man
who fell in love, as I did, with the place,
in 1983 when (a few years late for me)
you could build a home there,
live there — and he did.

It was the spiritual world
and the aesthetics which drew him:
‘the offerings in the homes,
the stonework in the temples ...
being part of community,
and answerable to the gods.’

Never mind the shops and tourism,
he says. The real life of Bali remains
resilient. That I am glad to learn!



Note: Last three verses refer to an article 
in The Sydney Morning Herald News Review 
Nov. 27-28 2010: A new life in the lap of the gods.


November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 30
Prompt: lessons learned and/or lessons not learned.

Next Steps

Keep very quiet. Tell no-one
what you experienced in Semarang
on your last visit to Bali.

(Yes, Semarang’s in Java. We went there
from Bali, to visit people we met; took in
Jogja and Borobudur on the way.)

Wrestle alone with the strange
things that happened. Try to find rational
explanations. Fail.

Driving across the island, south to north,
going up into the hills, we passed a hut.
A young woman came to her door
and stared out. Our eyes locked
a long moment. Behind her I saw
two small naked boys on a dirt floor.

At once it seemed I knew all about them,
what their lives were. It seemed I had lived
that childhood, become that mother.

Experience increasingly severe headaches.
Conceal them from others. Fear
you are going mad; fight for control.

Approaching Semarang, I felt
a dull headache begin and worsen
until I was dumb with pain.

When we came into the city, I knew
before we got there, what was around each bend,
in detail as if familiar. Shocked, said nothing.

Suddenly that stopped. The remaining streets
were unknown. Our host mentioned later 
an old and a new city. We’d driven through 
old Semarang to arrive at his home in the new.

After three months of silent battle, notice
you are still functioning in your life,
and are no danger to yourself or others.

Looking across Semarang harbour,
I saw two grey warships — visible, solid, and yet
I knew they would disappear if I shifted focus,
and that no-one else could see them there.

‘Did the war come to Semarang?’
I asked very casually. He shrugged.
‘The war came everywhere.’  Only
at home, when I did my research, I found

a picture of warships in that harbour —
not positioned exactly as I'd seen,
but I recognised the type of ship.
(Research said, probably Australian.)

Give up. If you are indeed building
a delusional structure in your head — well
it seems harmless; and it 's not going away.

Decide: If you can’t find a rational
explanation, accept the irrational.

                ************

The head pain stopped on the instant.
Peace engulfed me.  Surely
it was all fated. I became
aware of God.

______________________________________
November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 29
Prompt: a ‘next steps’ poem.

What Really Happened?

My youngest, twenty-odd years later,
found a new Bali — enough of the old
and enough contemporary thrills
to delight him. He liked the bars and clubs
as well as the directness of the villagers;
made friends, goes back sometimes.

Cool cat Adi, at 27, carried on the family business
with his own small hotel, dressed in jeans
instead of the traditional jacket and sarong,
had an Australian girlfriend (live-in)
and rode a motor-bike. It crashed. At 27 Adi died.

The French couple who took us to Tanah Lot
sent a surprised post-card at Christmas
in answer to my long, warm letter. So I learned,
‘Let’s keep in touch’ doesn’t always mean that.

David, my older son, said while still a child,
‘I don’t think I’d like to marry a Balinese girl.
I noticed that they start looking old very quickly.’

We didn’t keep in touch. Our lives changed
as lives do: we moved ... we split up
twelve years after our last trip to Bali.

Long before that, friends came as our guests
to Australia. We didn’t give them the good time
we all desired. Not so rich in our own country
as we looked in theirs, we were working hard.

I remember a hotel maid in Sanur, who asked,
‘How many servants do you have, at home?’
‘None,’ I told her. She murmured politely
but her eyes showed disbelief. ‘Feel my hands,’
I said. My hard palm visibly shocked her.

This happened, that happened, all of it real.
But just for a brief, unforgotten time, I saw
life lived as I’d always dreamed it could be.
That altered, and the country is richer now,
which may be good. But that short glimpse
was enough for me to know I wasn’t mad.

November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 28
Prompt: a "what really happened" poem.

Blame Hitler, Blame Hirohito

Blame Hitler, blame Hirohito, I don’t know —
whoever took war
to the beautiful islands of the South Pacific.

Blame them for the bomb
that simultaneously killed his parents
and deafened him for life.

It was Bill’s mate Neil who met Mendra,
and decided to take him to Java
to get his hearing fixed.

It was expensive. Bill helped too.
After that, Mendra was their friend forever
and the kids’ and mine as well.

He loved our kids and they loved him.
He was like a big elder brother or funny uncle
who made up games of clowning and mime.

The vocal chords had atrophied.
He could hear, but he still couldn’t speak.
So, as he always had, he used expression and gesture.

And he drew!
Those drawings were as good as speech.
We thought they were brilliant. Well, they were.

We wanted him to have a future
with his hearing and his art,
instead of the begging and the menial jobs.

But Mendra had TB.
I don’t know if you can blame the war for that.
He died suddenly, young, and we wanted to blame someone.


November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 27
Prompt: ‘Blame ...’  and fill in the blank.

The Lady from Lombok / Tail Between His Legs

Tail Between His Legs

When we had become
friends again,
able to talk and even laugh
about our respective peccadilloes,
he told me of the night
he tried to go to her bed a second time,
barefoot across the dark veranda
from his room to hers.

He almost stumbled into her husband,
leaning back in a chair
with his air rifle over his knees.
‘I’m just watching out
for stray dogs,’ he said.
‘If any old dog comes sneaking
into my place here
where he doesn’t belong,
he’ll get a big “Ping!” in the tail.’
and he rocked back and cackled.

I don’t recall what Bill replied, or if;
but he got the message. I think
he made a bit of conversation
and some excuse for being there —
knowing the other man knew
and knew Bill knew he knew —
then went back to his own bed,
concentrating hard on not running.


November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 26
Prompt: an ‘on the run’ poem

Guardian

At night, the island was full of spirits.

There were no street lights in those black lanes

only lamps on the verandas below the thatch,

or hung on poles beside the gates.

While the gekkos rustled in the cabin walls

we stayed indoors. ‘Don’t go out tonight,’

our friends said. ‘This is not a good night.

There are ghosts.’ On some other nights,

they whispered the names of demons.

They meant it seriously, and we believed.

It was not our country. Our rules

were absent here. This place lived

by its own reality. Besides, you could see

shapes in the shadows, and in the tendrils

of trailing smoke from the cooking fires.

I was glad, therefore, to meet the Barong

with his wild sunburst mane of a head

and the good face in the middle. I didn’t see

that face as animal or fierce. To me

the Barong was friendly, his gaze direct.

They told me he sometimes appeared

as elephant, horse or goat, but most often

the hybrid I encountered: lion and tiger mixed.

‘Who is that great animal with you?’

clairvoyants ask me. ‘Some kind of cat?’

It must be the Barong, still looking after me.

‘He wouldn’t let me near you,’ complained one —

who proved to be a bad friend. But that was in Australia.

In Bali I watched as villagers danced with the Barong

and Mendra hammered its image into beaten metal.

November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 25
Prompt: an animal poem

Spaces

I remember, at the resting place of the king,
a thin old man, hunched double, crawling like a spider
and grinning happily. Su explained, cripples were hidden
away from tourist centres, but this was a quiet spot
little visited. He could find a living here, minding the garden.

Even so, it was hard to comprehend that happy face.
‘All his needs are met,’ said my friend. And I looked around
at the old stone walls, the carved seats, the sunlight,
the straggling strands of bougainevillea, and thought:
This is one whose whole life is lived in regenerative spaces.


November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 24
Prompt: a spaces poem

Defining Moment

(Triolet)

At Uluwatu the water boiled green.
Su was with me in the temple on the cliff.
Was there anything more beautiful I’d ever seen?
At Uluwatu the water boiled green
and the froth was lacy. I had not foreseen
that gorgeous abyss, the unspoken ‘What if?’
At Uluwatu the water boiled green
as Su and I stood on top of the cliff.


November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 23
Prompt: a ‘form’ poem.

Submitted for dVerse Poetics: It's Tempting

Stand By Me

In time we read of the death
of the man who was still known
as the last Rajah of Denpasar,
though he never ruled.
We called him Bapah.

As his family did. It was a word
for Father, and he was Patriarch.
He and Bill talked philosophy, sang
old Dutch songs together. (Amazing
to us, how many Indonesians
had fond memories of the Dutch.)

When Bapah went to hospital,
Bill found him in pain on a thin mattress.
‘We’re not putting up with this!’ he said,
went back to the hotel and ripped
the comfortable one off his own bed.
He marched back into the hospital,
carrying it on his shoulder, lifted Bapah
on to a chair and remade the bed.

The old man recovered, and went on
visiting in turn each of his five wives
allotting equal time to keep the peace.
‘Have one wife only!’ he advised BIll.
What Bapah really wanted
in his old age, was to be a priest.

It was years later we read
of his cremation, and the tale
of how he was found as a baby,
only survivor of the mass suicide
of his conquered family.... A gentle man.


November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 22
Prompt: taking a stand.  (There are several in this poem.)

Note: The word for father is properly spelt Bapak, but we pronounced it as written here.

Permission Denied

I’m going home,’ he said.
‘You and the kids can stay longer.’

Good heavens, I thought,
he’s bored! How can that be?
But I never argued with Bill
when he was in that kind of mood.

I didn’t, but some did.
The trouble was, the boys —
too young to travel on their own —
appeared on his passport, not mine.

‘I’ll fix it,’ he said,
striding up to the counter.

Through calm request,
blustering, some vague threats
of 'important contacts',
and an attempted bribe,

the uniformed man
continued to smile
politely, contemptuously.
‘I’m sorry sir.’


November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 21
Prompt: a ‘permission’ poem

Innocence

‘I must believe,’ he said.
I understood. ‘Yes,
because you have seen.’

He nodded. He was speaking
of the witches in his home village
in Karangasem, past the mountain.
His uncle was one of them.

Already I too believed,
though I didn’t know then
that I myself was a witch.
There were just these things I did,
these things that happened....

I think of that acceptance
now, in my own country,
where so many ignorantly think
witches are evil, magic is wrong.

In Bali the villagers knew
witches are healers, magic
like all things, is a gift from God.


November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 20
Prompt: a ‘what’s wrong or right’ poem

This poem also appears in Sherry's Poets United feature: A Chat With Rosemary Nissen-Wade ~ On Poetry and Witchcraft.

The Children

The children squatted in a circle
around a space on the ground,
heads bent, hands moving
in a game I couldn’t see:

David and Stephen, blonde,
aged six and four — mine —
and Rini and Trisna, dark,
quick and thin, a little older.

Absorbed in their play,
unconcerned with us,
unconsciously beautiful
in opposite ways,

they spoke to each other
with looks and gestures
and with words they didn’t share,
the meaning understood.

In the centre of their circle
was a space, which they filled
with the business of play
and with communication.

There was no gap between them.



November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 19
Prompt: write a poem with a hole in it.

Lost and Found

(The Effect of Holidaying in Bali)

We lost
fidelity,
the certainty
of being our greatest loves.

We lost the keeping
of our promises to each other,
the warmth of them,
and truth.

He did allow himself
to be seduced
by the soft-voiced young woman
with lowered eyes.

And I, refraining from golden youth,
fell into other (unregretted) arms.
A fellow traveller, a romantic
tale I won’t tell here.


************

We found
the real truth of each other
to each other —
which we then ignored.

In our hearts
we were brother and sister,
not lovers.
Not even best friends, but mirrors.

We found a way back
to our interrupted marriage.
There was love; it was real.
And there were the kids.

I played him like a whore
rather than risk them a stepmother —
mine had been cruel, my Dad too weak.
And that’s the truth.


November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 18
Prompt: a ‘lost and found’ poem.
(The marriage didn't last - how could it? - but it endured until the kids were grown.)

Submitted 23 May 2013 to Poets United's Verse First: The Wild Truth

Tell Me Why

Why do you still think of Bali
after all these years?

Love is the answer to every question
and this one too. I fell intensely in love
with the place as you might a person.

Why did you burst out crying
so often on that first visit?

As Bill said at the time, understanding first:
it was the Indian in me. I was seeing
memories of my grandparents’ house —
bowls, carvings, vases, jewellery....

And after your third visit, why did you sob
uncontrollably, all the way home on the plane?

I knew I would never return to Bali,
never be with my love again. I was right.
Life has a way of cancelling our plans.
And now it’s too late; my Bali is dead.

Why are you writing so many poems
on your Bali? Why not let go?

I am old at last, and selecting
what is precious out of my life.
I offer the essence to God, and I feast.


November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 17
Prompt: make the title ‘Tell me why (blank)’, fill in the blank, then write the poem.
(My poem has several questions, so I left the title unfinished.)

Regret

Mendra’s drawings were thrown away.
‘We’ll go back there another day,
and get some better ones,’ I said.
Three months later Mendra was dead.
We never went back anyway.

In gifted drawings, he’d portray
the things he had no speech to say
from out his deaf-mute, silenced head.
Mendra’s drawings,

which he made for my sons in play
and in love, on our final day,
scribbled on scraps of a note-pad,
turned out to be all that we had
of our friend. But I threw away
Mendra’s drawings.


November PAD Chapbook Challenge 210: 16/2
Prompt: an unstacking poem

(And it's another rondeau.)

Islanding

‘She will dwell too much in fantasy,’
the palmist told my parents
when I was a child. ‘Make sure
she keeps her feet on the ground.’

The ground I walked then
was the island, Tasmania,
and I wanted no other place to be.
Nature fed my inner world,
fantasy mixed with reality.

I was river and sky,
ocean and mountain,
earth and tree. I was
inside dream and fairy-tale.
The spirits of place
spoke to me.

Wrested away at 15,
to a flat, dry landscape,
I lived in longing.
Fate moved me. I merged
with a city; seldom returned
to my island, except in sleep.

I was 34 when I stepped off a plane
into Bali — another small island
of mountains and streams.
Ocean and sky embraced me.
The spirits danced, surrounding me.

Afterwards, though I walked the ground
of Melbourne, I lived my life
in a strange state of removal, my soul
inhabiting an island.


November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 15 (slightly out of order)
Prompt: a "just when you thought it was safe" poem.

Remembering Bali

I remember processions of women
winding their way on narrow roads
to the temple.
Their sarongs were edged with gold,
their kebayas lacey.
I remember the deep colours:
vivid pinks, magentas,
inspired by hibiscus and bougainevillea.

And on their heads
high, conical towers of offerings:
trays of food and flowers
in colours to match or outdo
the kebayas and sarongs —
piled to impossible heights,
and tapering
to the tiniest points at the top.

Every offering,
every portion of every layer,
was an intricate work of art
created lovingly
without hurry.
And without hurry
they walked to the temple
straight-backed, with gently swaying hips.

The serenity
of those petal-soft faces
completes me still
as I gaze in recollection.
Watching the processions pass,
not with fanfare but simply
as day-to-day life,
day-to-day life becomes enough.

November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 16/1
Prompt: a stacking poem

Crossing Points

At the intersection of two paths
she placed rice and flowers
in a tiny palm-leaf boat.

Seeing me, she smiled,
put her hands together and bowed.
I returned the unknown gesture.

It was my first morning in Bali.
I‘d slipped out early
before the others woke.

Six years later, guests
at Ngurah’s father’s cremation,
we shared the preliminary feast.

Some tourists opened the gate.
Ngurah strode down the path. ‘Sorry,
this part is only for family.’


November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 14
Prompt: a crossroads poem

How Shall We Spend the Money?

He had such a good month,
we found ourselves unexpectedly rich.
We needed carpets, we needed curtains —
but we never even had a honeymoon.
Kids and all, we went to Bali.

That was such a good month!
The experience proved unexpectedly rich.
Woven carpets, bamboo curtains,
and the holiday became a honeymoon,
kids and all, in exotic Bali.

Laughing and silly,
we sprawled on the bed. The kids
were having their afternoon sleep.
‘Just think,” I said straight-faced,
“We could have had curtains and carpets,
if we hadn’t come to Bali.’

We laughed ourselves silly,
rolling on the bed — while the kids
somehow managed to stay asleep —
to think how ridiculously straight-laced
it would have been, buying curtains and carpets
instead of coming to Bali.

 
November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2010: 13
Prompt: Ask a question in the title and have the poem answer it.

(This form doesn’t have a name yet; it’s my own invention.)