Laban Carrick Hill

When the Regional English Language Office the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta invited me to Indonesia last fall, I picked up a copy of Laksmi Pamuntjak's The Jakarta Good Food Guide in anticipation of writing an article for Gourmet. When I contacted Laksmi in hopes of getting her to give me a tour of Jakarta's restaurants, I found out that she would be in the U.S. when I was in Indonesia. To add to this, Gourmet closed its doors after more than 80 years while I was on the trip, which canceled my piece for them.

Despite these disappointments, my friendship with Laksmi blossomed, and though we have never met in person, I was fortunate enough to discover what a marvelous poet and novelist she is. I've included this poem in this inaugural post of the Groundnut Soup International Writing Blog. As a writer who often travels around the world and is the co-director of the Ghana Poetry Project, I am fortunate to meet and read a number of writers who do not have wide distribution outside their own country. This blog is meant to celebrate the many, many writers who are out there.

This week I share with you the poem "A Traveler's Tale" by Laksmi Pamuntjak. Laksmi was born in Jakarta. She is the author of a treatise on violence and theIliad, a collection of short stories magazine. I contacted Laksmi in hopes of getting her to take me around Jakarta. It turned out that she was in the U.S. while I was there. On top of that entitled The Diary of R.S.: Musings on Art, the award-winning The Jakarta Good Food Guide series and two collections of poetry, The Anagram and Ellipsis. Ellipsis appeared on The Herald UK Books of the Year 2005 list. She has just completed her first novel, The Blue Widow.

A Traveler’s Tale

Perhaps every journey begins
by going down the staircase

or trawling through a passage
in your granny’s house where

a door might lead to shadows
& ink stains, a fireside of charred

carbon. Folks often mistake
the soul for the spirit, and like the

key that falls to the sand, we
rise to the swarm but forget the

man. Or songs stitched in the sky
long before cities were erected and

signposts staked. The wind may be
unfaithful as light selects it aperture;

we may give praise to the wrong God,
and remember only what illuminates

the field, the glutinous parts of the map.
We scan the spread from the crest of

the earth as though the world were
merely the consequence of some cosmic

spillage, the mountains brittle before the
sun, the sea no more than water leaking

into space. But lately there is no telling
summer from silver, as islands sink and

fish gasp in the black hole of unseasonal
drought. What stories we may find

in our passage through imagining
are buried in dead men’s chests or

saved by the moon like the face of
a stray goddess. Such that it comes as a

gentle surprise that the pages that leap
from certain books hint of something closer

to the skin, a mother’s fingerprint, or a
bead of sweat that escapes a father’s neck,

bent over the very same lines, sending
him places with wide-eyed wings.