The Sea is not the Metaphor
The black sand glitters its volcanic secrets,
Moonlight reveals evening delights,
Sunlight reveals sweating fishermen; toiling for a small fish or two,
Some wear their motorcycle helmets- hunting the ocean for a miserable snack,
In between the lost rubber sandals, smashed coconut shells,
Smoothly ground broken bottles, broken tiles, broken lives:
It sparkles, it glitters.
Hysterical crabs neurotically search the surf.
Dash from sand to sea, foam to earth.
Walk northwards and look up:
Gunung Agung appears/ disappears
With shocking clarity. Massive and beautiful.
The life-force of this island performing the dance of Kali.
Turn your back to see the lights of Sanur.
Imported sand. Imported customers.
Fat white tourists easing out of their loungers,
Their marbled flesh oozing pendulously over the fantasy of their
Bathing suits.
Ecstatic in tropical bliss.
We throw our offal into the sea,
We offer our prayers, our canang sari- fragrant with smouldering incense.
We leave these on the sand, for the sea.
Bathtub rings appear on the black shore: white chicken feathers,
Green sea grass, brown bottles, topaz shells, white toothpaste tubes.
Multi-coloured IndoMie packaging
Feeds the beach.
Whole forests and fields are bulldozed into the canals
They feed the sea,
They fill the blackened beach.
Bamboo forests
Uprooted,
Dead.
Memories of happy families wash up, tumbled in the stones:
A running shoe, a bloated dog, a fat guinea pig,
A tangled raft of used, disposable nappies,
A light bulb.
Whose lives lost these things?
Whose homes are now swept clean?
The jagged edges of the broken things lie in the glittering sand,
Watching with jaws agape for the unwary tread of a bare foot.
Exposed.
Things that were unwanted
Are returned, smashed.
They glitter.
Things that were loved,
Things that were taken,
Are returned, smashed.
They glitter.
For a day or two the sand is strewn with the wreckage of lives.
For a day or two the sand is washed clean,
Swept free.
The cleaned slate.
But memories linger,
they return
and return
and return.
They disappear from sight, hide in the bejewelled black sand
Waiting to gash, to tear.
To tear, this word that appears like a tear.
There were no magical creatures that scuttled around his fallen form,
To cover him with shining bubbles, to transport him into the welcoming
Sea.
There might have been moonlight.
This is the island of the gods.
They were more than Ralph,
Mourning the loss of innocence,
The passing of Simon and brave, fat Piggy;
The loss of a wise, true friend.
The loss of themselves.
There was black tar.
It did not glitter.
There was a helmet.
It did not sparkle.
He returns on our shores,
Again
and again
and again.
25 April 2012
Werner Paetzold
Bali (For Daniel Droniak)
