Written in 2004 just days after the Boxing Day tsunami killed more than 230,000 people, Adi Rumi, a Brunei-born poet, wrote “Brothers, your cries…” for those suffering in neighbouring Indonesia, where the damage was the worst. The poet’s word choice perfectly straddles that fine line between gush and restraint that all poems about tragedy must negotiate. Take “taste sadness” for example; the phrase mimics the very sound of a wave; the verb “taste” has a brutal immediacy to it and comes semantically tied to the idea of salt and the disturbing thought that it was the last taste in the mouths of those who perished.
The solemnness of the occasion is marked by the three end-stopped sentences; they create extended pauses, each one allowing silence to enter the poem, which is perhaps the most appropriate response to such a massive loss. The poet encourages the Indonesians – using precise juxtapositions to create a dualism that allows the survivors a distance from the wreckage of the wave – to hope, and to overcome the devastation. Never stumbling into maudlin declarations, Rumi creates a tough, well-crafted poem on an intensely sad subject.
The writer and founder of Summertime Publishing, Jo Parfitt, wrote our second poem in Brunei. “Can I Walk Away” picks at the consistent transition at the core of the expat experience – if it is not you who is coming and going, it is your friends and acquaintances. It is something of a love poem to Brunei – where Parfitt lives and is considering leaving. The poet illustrates what she appreciates about her experience in the country: surprising monkeys, good food and “fast-made friends”. The structure stacks questions that are less rhetorical and more representative of strings of thought that linger in the mind of the poet as she ponders her future. Either way, the sense of poignancy is clear, and whether or not the poet leaves Brunei, we can be sure that she will never forget her experience there.
“Brothers, your cries…”
by Adi Rumi
Brothers, your cries
are ours too.
Together we taste sadness.
We know,
you are steel-strong nation
not a flower-nation that easily droops.
Even in sorrow,
you never surrender.
“Can I Walk Away”
by Jo Parfitt
Can I walk away
from here
without leaving
scraps of my soul
like second skin
on your bruised streets,
in your sky,
and on your beach?
Can I turn my back
on a river
that carried me
to a silence
I could touch
and where a moving bough
meant not breeze
but monkey.
Can I leave behind
the good times
and good tikka;
or June who ‘did’
my face and toes
and talked of mangoes
in Manila;
those bent-tailed cats
with attitude;
and twelve-a-kilo prawns?
Can I erase these memories
that painted days
with pink
and can I forget those
fast-made friends
who gave me mornings
filled with equal music?
