I have now returned from my summer travels and am back to this world of running water, 24-hour electricity—and blogs. Since my husband and I spent six weeks this summer backpacking in Indonesia for our honeymoon, I thought it would be appropriate to open the blog with an Indonesian poet. This idea, however, was not as easy as I thought it would be. Indonesian poetry is relatively new—with many estimates dating it back to the early 1900s. And the poetry for the first few decades was nationalistic. Also, Indonesia is made up of 17,000 different islands—many with their own culture and language. So, there are issues with translation. First one needs to translate a poem into Bahasa Indonesian and then to another language for more world-wide distribution—if more worldwide distribution is wanted. Frankly, I cannot understand most contemporary Indonesian poetry since very few poets are translated and my knowledge of Bahasa Indonesian is quite limited to food and transportation nouns.
The poet I decided to share with you is one who does translate Indonesian poets and who co-founded a bilingual bookstore in Jakarta. I thank her for her efforts.
To My Parents, Who Visited My College Town Twelve Years After I Graduated
By: Laksmi Pamuntjak from her book Ellipsis
So the both of you passed through the
brownstone. Why, it must be something
of a relic now: grimy, petulant, flaccid
around the edges. Did you go to the Bay,
find out whose sitting on my river bench?
But you didn't relate much. Like a French
film, you communicated like you and I
never did: under your breath, in silent
inference, the language of white lies.
The gas station is no more, you wrote.
The Avenue, so grand in your days,
looks like the way to everywhere else.
We tried to look your piano mentor up
but no luck there. The driveway to his
studio no flaxen with rotting lemon trees.
But both of you went to see the dolphins.
You used to laugh when I told you that
I knew them one by one--just like that, from the calm
and the choke of their gazes. You told me they
have not much use of their eyes.
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