Oct 08, 2024 Last Updated 4:30 AM, Oct 7, 2024

Poems and pictures

Poems and pictures
Published: Jul 02, 2010

Suzan Piper


hardi2

On this charred earth our hearts always ask:
What else do we own? What price love?

On this charred earth our hearts always ask:
Where must we go, where is our house?

On this charred earth our hearts are always asking,
hearts made anxious by conflict!

On this charred earth our hearts always ask:
Today death will call upon who?


hardi3
hardi4

 

A person who waits
and transverses time.
A heart, a desert without flowers.
Air and stones at once in her womb.

She sits upon wounds.
Humouring her passions she says:
I am old now.
And they order me:

‘Just sit there!
And wait!’


hardi5 hardi6
I hear a voice:
The cry of a wounded animal…
Someone shoots an arrow at the moon.
A small bird has fallen from its nest.

People must be awakened
Witness must be given
So that life can be guarded.
hardi7
hardi8

 

Life is not for complaining and grumbling.
Life is for transforming life,
working turning the soil,
entering the secrets of the heavens and the oceans
and creating and measuring the world.
We bear tasks
because tasks are tasks.
Not for heaven or hell,
but for the dignity of a human being.


hardi9
hardi10

 

Putting hands into action
transforming reality.
Putting hands into action
pursuing dreams.

Making hands into fists
sheltering life.
Making hands into fists
hunting away oppression.

hardi11
hardi12

 

Yesterday and tomorrow
are today.
Disaster and good fortune
are the same.

Horizons beyond us
horizons within us
uniting in the soul.



Inside Indonesia 101: Jul-Sep 2010

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