Three Poems

Soul

You have not earned the rightto use this word,a white professor said to thePersian girlas he ran his eye over herpoem. And filled with shame(at her own presumption)she scratched out four lettersthat she had not earnedthe right to use.The word disappearedalong with her mother’s laugh,the sizzle of turmeric in a pan,cool floors, lemon trees, the heat ofsummer sand, a honey cake placedtenderly into her mouth,her heart dipping and liftinglike a wayward kite,scoldings, kisses, anger, fright…brushed away like messy crumbsfrom a rich man’s table…Then suddenly she saw her penremake the word (she had not earned)And in the lovely shape of itShe felt her soul return…

Don’t Be Afraid (Jangan Merasa Takut)

Don’t be afraid of this new sky –the vast blue blast of it over our heads,Jangan merasa takutkarena langit ini sama dengan langitdi mana-mana,Don’t be afraid becauseit is the same sky everywhere.Don’t be afraid of girls namedCheryl and Belinda flicking their blonde hairand looking disdainfully at the contents of your lunch box.One day their children will be trying to makechilly sambal and roti canai on Masterchef.Don’t be afraid of new syllables,scented with strawberry lip glossand vowels flattened like burst balloons,Deadset as soon as you learn to speak Australian,you’re in like Flynn. It doesn’t matter thatyou look a bit different.Don’t be afraid of living secret lives,Hidupan rahasia.The one where you are a good daughter:Anak patuh yang belajar baik-baik danmasak nasi untuk makan malam,Studying hard and cooking ricefor the evening meal,And the one where you sashay down the street with your friendsin hotpants and a boob tubekeeping a look out for Asian aunties…Don’t be afraid of the lurid pink icing on finger buns or ofeating a pie and sauce while you yearn for sate ayam.Don’t be afraid when coconut tanning oil,on an Australian beach, starts to smell the same as nasi lemakOr when you can’t quite recall the cicak sound of geckoesscurrying on the ceiling in your grandmother’s house.Don’t be afraid when you’re not sure if you prefera banana paddle pop or an es kacang on a hot dayOr when your memories fade like fallen rainbows…Don’t be afraid because your heart is big enough to hold this new sky –and your mouth will always know that the taste ofapples can never be the same as the taste of rambutan.Jangan merasa takutkarena ingatan dan pelangi pasti kembalisetelah angin ribut,Memories like rainbows will surely return after stormsSo don’t be afraid…This poem: Don’t Be Afraid (Jangan Merasa Takut) is a little letter to my teenage self – a skinny brown kid growing up in Cronulla (possibly the most insular and white bread Sydney suburb) in the 1970s. It does make reference to how things have changed in multicultural Australia from that very Anglo centred time. But mostly it reflects on the issues of identity that confront those of us who migrated here as children or teenagers. An identity that is as deeply embedded in Australia as it is in our country of origin. We are not just caught between physical worlds but between imagined worlds and remembered worlds. Shifting from one world to another means that all the boundaries become blurred and we start to accumulate a different set of dreams and memories.

Peribahasa (Proverb)

Spilt milk cannot be drunkor scooped back into a cuptapi nasi yang sudah menjadi buburmasih bisa dimakan,but rice which has become porridgecan still be eatenand fills my mouth withpearly softnessand the salty certainty ofkecap scented hope,(enak dan hangat)the taste of morning comfortin my grandmother’stropical kitchen…Later in my childhoodI will cry over milkspilt on winter hard asphalt –an irretrievable white splatteramong shards of smashed glass,I will cry because of angry voicesand because this milk(unlike hujan yang jatuh ke pasir)does not melt tenderly like rain into sandbut lingers maliciously in sticky trickleson my shoes and books,I will cry because this bottled milkin a cold school yard is not abowl of fragrant buburwaiting for mein a kitchen far away…I love the tiny wisdoms in proverbs and the fact that they reflect the human condition. So this little poem is based on two proverbs one in English and one in Indonesian which offer the same message. The English proverb is Don’t cry over spilt milk and its Indonesian counterpart is Nasi sudah menjadi bubur (The rice has already become porridge) which I think offers more hope than the disaster of spilt milk. I relished the savoury rice porridge that I ate for breakfast during my childhood in Malaysia and I hated the bottles of milk that we were forced to drink at primary school when my family moved to London. This poem is about proverbs, memories and food.