Thirteen
Ways of Looking at Malaysia
Inspired by
Wallace Stevens’ poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Blackbird
I
Between us
The only
moving thing
Was the
world’s averted Conscience
II
The blackbirds in Malaysia warble
one heretical song all day long.
Am and pm, they intone, Allah,
We are the bumiputera
III
Under their
heels, Among The Believers
the silk saris
of Sanskrit and the songs of God
in the flat
world joust for liberty
the five
Pandava brothers are
our remnant
IV
In the
melodious red riches of our blood
Tanah
tumpahnya darahku
In the
meticulous study of the word, and
the Vedas, God
runs like notes on a river
We are not the
only ones
Tanah
tumpahnya darahku
V
Among the
believers
under the shadows
of vast trees
looking up! I
am both Draupadi
and the woman
at the well; now
No man can
confiscate that!
VI
We are not the
only ones trod underfoot
Theirs are not
the only mouths
Opened to sing
Or shut under
green umbrellas
Tanah
tumpah nya darahku
VII
We are not the
only ones
sons and
daughters of the earth
The progeny of
birth
Heirs to our
homeland
VIII
Once in
innocence
Our unclean
lips puckered
Under the sun.
That was
When we
believed we
belonged to
nations and to men
IX
I sang the
song of nativity
until my
tongue like cut ribbons
Fell to the
ground. Still. The river
runs nubile,
singing…
tanah
tumpahnya darahku
X
In the silence
that came after
In the year of
the palindrome
I rocked
backwards and forwards
In my heart
XI
Then one day
writing in my cell at noon
As the two
hands of the clock came
To rest one on
top of the other
I uttered a
prayer
XII
That left the
circle like blackbirds
shot out of
the poisoned tip
Of the lying
pens that looped
us like galley
slaves
Hung like question
marks
in our own
throats
XIII
To find such
welcome in the embrace
of a true God,
and mothers of God
who will not
permit halving the body
of
believers………………
Here in the
emptiness of space
In an interior
castle
Bereft of the
supremacist race
I belong to no
one
Here the
blackbirds sing
Here I lift my
head
Here I hear
God. Here I hear God.
Here I know
there is no God but God
And this God
showers roses on
Blackbirds
rising to sing their litany
Tanah
tumpahnya darahku
Tanah
tumpahnya darahku
Tanah
tumpahnya darahku
Notes
1. ‘Bhumiputera’ is a Sanskrit term that means ‘sons of the soil’ –
currently used by Muslims to politicise and aggrandise themselves as a
supremacist race.
2. Draupadi is a major female character in the Bhagavad Gita
(the Hindu Bible).
3. Among The Believers – Sir V.S. Naipaul’s record of Muslim
life in Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia.
4 ‘tanah tumpahnya darahku’ – from the Malaysian national anthem
that means curiously enough ‘... the land upon which my blood has been shed’.
5. ‘interior castle’ refers to a spiritual treatise by St Therese, a
Catholic saint.
