FROM A SUMATRAN DIARY


PRAPAT, West Sumatra, Indonesia. 18.1.87.

Got up, cold and unable to sleep anyhow, around 6.45am.
Saw a black blob on the dark wall opposite my face.
Thought it was probably a big ‘roach. It was. Didn’t even
bother to scare it away.

Read Kerouac.

“Fun isn’t everything. You’ve got some responsibilities
sometimes, you know.” (The Dharma Bums.)


SAMOSIR ISLAND / LAKE TOBA, West Sumatra.

Came for Western Breakfast. Two hours till the bus.
There’ll be a boat along sometime to ferry me over to
the mainland. The lake looks typically Toban: grey,
but calm and cold. The wind picks up; throws things
around.

Sumatrans, souvenir shops, babies, buses and dogs.

After today, one more full day? Really, three full days,
in effect. Get to Brastagi (5 hours!) 3pm. Bus for Medan
probably tuesday am. If it’s short enough, and practical.
Stomach bad. Blame the good 1500 rp. chocolate
yesterday.

The lake turned out not to be calm, but very choppy.
Thought a few times we’d all end up in the water, but it
turned out alright. There's no end to the depth of this
water it seems: it's the deepest, darkest grey imaginably
before blackness. It rolls over in sleepy waves with the
force of weaponry. I'd not want to fall in there: it wouldn't
let me back out.


BRASTAGI. 19.1.87. 6.45am.

I’m knackered. Bad dreams – so much running in last one.
Woke up, got up, before 6.30am. Slept OK. otherwise,
despite disturbed sleep for last few nights, and I don’t see
them stopping till I’m home.

Since yesterday I’ve had an idea I’m in for some kind of
breakdown. I can feel something move in me. I’m so tired;
exhausted. If I am about to get ill, I hope it waits till I get
home, that’s all.

Today I’ll go to Medan and stay the night there. Book a
boat seat to go with my ticket today. Boat leaves 7pm.
Still a long time. Don’t relish a return to that city: the
word ‘dive’ is overused, but applied to Medan it’s the
only suitable noun. Something it shares with Jammu.
Though I heard Jakarta is worse.

MEDAN. 20.1.87. 9.15am.

For four and a half months I’ve been going somewhere.
I’m not sure I’ll feel like I’ve arrived until the plane touches
down at Heathrow. The irony doesn’t escape me.

On the boat. Tired, but not expecting much sleep. My father
dying back home. A race against time.



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KEVAN MANWARING (Wales)

THE RAVENOUS SEA

The sea moans its hunger tonight.
With its many mouths it devours the shore,
here, in this strange-tongued coast,
haunted by the ghosts of cities -
sixteen lost in Cantred Gwaelod,
the lowest hundred, its hoard below.
So the bards sing - sing of its vanished riches,
its fields and orchards,
villages and castles.

To dolphins and lonely fishermen
now the sunken bells toll -
a long low note in the deep
ringing for the drowned.

And half a world away
the same story is told
with deadly effect.

A sea god shrugged his shoulders
and massacred a continent’s children.
The necklace of its archipelago broken,
beads strewn -
numberless souls claimed
by a displaced sea,
a bitter tide, a tsunami of death.
Leaving a flotsam of lives wrecked,
families ruined, towns razed,
like the mythic kingdom of Cardigan Bay,
but for real.

A reality too vast to comprehend
except perhaps through legend.
A catastrophe as overwhelming as the ocean,
unless viewed from a wind-devilled cliff
with friends close,
fragile and precious,
holding on with love -
singing into the storm
and casting prayers into the darkening depths.

As all the while kings of the world,
arrogant as Maelgwyn,
sit on thrones of feather and wax.

And the waves thunder in
tasting of tears.



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ADAM SYKES (England)

150,000+

Without a noise, a warning,
or clarion call
the sudden gulf of the impossible
striking from so far below

to stand, those who remained,
and see the remnants
of life, and death, strewn
powerless against such force:
nature's disquieting call to arms.

Surrendering, after first strike,
we begin to rebuild an existence.

W.B. KECKLER (USA)

OCEAN


I was just walking out the door,
but stopped

why?      maybe

say--
something in ink,

tho hat's already on,
coat's zipped up

warm
is what we remember

maybe it's childish
to stop



whose wave of     us
it's going through

us

the bodies    the eyes

is, is, is...



A girl, four years old,
is still fuschia

walks

the staggered
streets

(no one here but

open arms,
a cat's head

lifts atop rubble pyramid,
eyes meet

there's only one
atomic fact



islands      the dead

as Isis gathered
her body-love

look
she starts to climb



fathermother
sisterbrother

listen
to the surf

water can say
all these words



today

water has written
on stone

the ocean
each heart means

to gather.



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ROBERTA WEST (England)

A TSUNAMI POEM


A Tsunami Wave swept them away.

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AGNES ADOBE (England)
SWAMPED


A baptism, a new beginning. And it involves
so much compassion. I dreamed I had washed
in death, had strode through dirty foam -

my hurt gesture
to stir up and invert
the order of charity -

I gave my daughter to this appeal, saw her
float off without a face. A sacrifice - one third
of which was children - to renew the abode
of dragons, to make a new purity out of maidens
you must steep in salt water to obtain
their essence.

I place a drop of this girl on my tongue.

She is swept inland from the coast, deep into
my interior. Diminutive bodies. Old dames. A glamorous
tree decoration I made from a boy, each palm
has this kind of fairy raised over filth.

A portion of meat. These water babies keep
texting me from the bottom of the sea.

Plankton epithet. Suitcases washed inland -
designer jeans, tops, beachwear - a thong
finely woven with gold thread
amongst silt in the temple. Items to sell
on eBay. A broken backed lady from HR
on week two knotting rope to coco palm -
this flood will make good postcards
to collect. A harvest for the factory ships.

God will fake more Darwinian splendours -
people living like eels - swimming upstream
to spawn; in the sluice, the chatter at low tide.
Already on sale in the redemptive harbour,
mer-girls and boys. A monkey torso stitched
to the tail of a fish and dried with neroli
in the native ovens. Disaster kitsch.

The teeth of tourists knocked out on a wall
become charms, remedies. An eerie silence
tunnelled from the moon. This sticky child,
a challenge to all our ideas of beauty, bloated
after two days her cherry eyes dark with
the promise of life - a stag carcass upended
like a Somerset road kill - the unborn dead
on my tongue. The most angry are men
needing supper, sitting down to a plate in thrall
to sea urchins, soft lobsters, jumbo shrimps.

You send your money my lovely and
display your big heart but what of the
refugees? English compassion is good PR
but does not extend to survivors like these.



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LILY USHER (aged 12) (WALES)
TSUNAMI POEM


There came a wave like a great hand,