By Dorothea Rosa Herliany
someone has hidden time’s secret inside my old age. in the endlessly unfaithful mist he patiently cures while waiting for words. year after year rotting fruit drips and creates seed to fertilise the hectares of dry ground and dark silent hills. swarms of fruitpickers herd creatures pregant with old hopes in each memory. the secret brays in the waves of air rising from a liar’s mouth. the foul air quivers and changes its fertile colour to black.
in each corner of love dry leaves darkened the heart-breaking silence. the tiny huts prepared their roofs and walls for a traveller searchng for mosquitoes and evening stars which cursed a distant song which had no end.
here evening angels encircle me. I am reading old verses by world poets about the wellbeing of black crows. the sky sends its shivering darkness to stories in worn books that are hundreds of years old. my hands are fettered by the stupidity of cruel men. cynics weigh my feet down with chains and hundreds of kilograms of hatred. knowledge of heaven slays my heart: my soul is killed by the truth of the farmers.
someone has written a secret inside time. the older the century the less people can read the dark symbols contained in its screams. i solve them in every new secret contained in my foetus.
Translated by Harry Aveling