Jamal D. Rahman
ALL THE MORE ETERNAL ROCKS
With wounded corpse, I smeared blood onto this wall
then I let the sky talked to itself. Scorning or laughing
I felt the rocks are becoming more eternal. Because upon them
my anger and saturation were being carved.
Pouring all the meanings of love and hatred
of the sky. Calling on lightning and waking up the night.
The stars had fallen, as drizzle of tears.
Trickled without a sound
1990
translated by Nikmah Sarjono
Jamal D. Rahman
CORRIDOR’S BREEZE
At the end, we finally created many stopovers
inside our bodies. Dusty and smoky was the road
that we’ve walked through. Our children had fell along
that road. Ahead of us, broken bones and iron wreckage.
The road has narrowed, the fences wider, the bridges higher.
Corridor’s breeze blows, day and night. Connecting
all the growing stopovers inside our bodies. But we’ve
became unable to make contact. Even as the wind blows,
nothing seemed connecting us to other people.
Neither did we feel any need to do so. The roads have taught us
merely with touches we’d never realized. Still,
something is moving inside our bodies
Within the coldness of our prayers, eventually we built bridges
and sidewalks. There, the corridor’s breeze felt even colder.
And when those stopovers have been built completely,
we are no longer recognize our own bodies….
1993
translated by Nikmah Sarjono
Jamal D. Rahman
THE WRECKS OF HUMAN AGE
I haven’t yet finished unloading my body. Sandstones
reformate themselves. Like the days that stacked on
the freeway, endlessly embracing the clock who after you
all day: motor vehicles will only take you to mortal dreams.
I witness again the Sun
blazes eternally, like the circles made by Earth,
circles that continuously being cut by continent’s thirst
But still I wake my body up from the wrecks of
human age. While my dreams moved between
the bouncing balls this world has thrown
Yet I unload again my body, keep on unloading.
Couldn’t reach its spirit in dreams: I shouted
all alone in the solitude of human age
1994
translated by Nikmah Sarjono
Jamal D. Rahman
CHANGE ME INTO A WAVE
From the tips of your eyebrows, I began this life.
The pointyness of my ’Bismillah’ cut down the shrubs
in the forest of eternity, sharpened the everlastingly opened
land of prayers. But where have the holy water delivered
your epistles? In my bow I did not read. In my worship
I did not spell. Tears of my prayers dropped from every tree,
every star, every bird, every water spot in the river of the sun.
O, my bow is the ocean who carries mountains towards
refugee’s land. And I have rolled and crashed
before I became a wave
Yes, from the tips of your eyebrows, change me into a wave
who chase on continent’s age. Because everytime I get crushed,
there will be something you hear: the pointyness of my ’Bismillah’
pounding, slashing the world’s alienation
1997
translated by Nikmah Sarjono
Jamal D. Rahman
RAIN IN PAINTINGS OF TEARS
I read the rain that poured from the paintings
of our tears. The clouds still spread my yearnings
in procession, to the curves of your eyebrows
that started to shed. I saw the fire of my prayer
burned the dry soil, caused a crack on the earth
who read you until the sound of the bell ends
I read your letters with the squeaking sound of the doors
calling on you each time I open up the land of the Sun.
Yes, burn me. Burn me with your letters that hide my heartbeat.
Burn my tears until the roads burst out the fire of prayer
into crater that holds our pure soil
Yes, burn my love, before I look back to the rain
falling from your prayers.
1997
translated by Nikmah Sarjono
Jamal D. Rahman
THOSE WHO PLANT THE SEEDS OF WIND,
WILL HARVEST THE STORM (1)
For the martyr of Reformation,1998
While holding on to the storm, I kiss the sea fire
Burning within your chest. I still can smell the dry season
in your breath, like that cracked tower of time. But we wept:
the sea fire fell into our palms — tonight
I’ll kiss the fire that burns the city:
your cremated ashes blaze on the stairs of the dry season,
until pain springs from wounds. Your cremated heart
slaughters the children of time, until blood
springs from the pain.
While holding on to the storm,
I kiss the sea fire that burns my heart
1998
translated by Nikmah Sarjono
Jamal D. Rahman
THOSE WHO PLANT THE SEEDS OF WIND,
WILL HARVEST THE STORM (2)
On this river, you are the tinkling sounds of water
flowing between the stones. Bamboo tree’s rustles,
gets us closer to a rose. But you say: in here, I am
a thorny rose of your heart
On this river, you are the roots of casuarina tree
stuck outward the water. You wash your feet
and utter an incantation. The rhythm of the river changed.
Its banks flattened. And you say: in here, I am
The roots of casuarina tree that strangle your heart
1998
translated by Nikmah Sarjono
Jamal D. Rahman
IN OUR CHESTS THUNDER AND LIGHTNING
ARE STILL ROARING
Rain always reminds me of the ocean who
arouses my infatuation, to the river who produces
the cries of water, calling on estuary. Because I know,
once it flows away from the source, water will never again
hear the tinkling sounds that it used to play. Therefore
I can never understand, why everytime the freshwater
meets the salty water in that estuary,
the sea always churns:
please don’t leave. The rain hasn’t yet subsided,
in our chests thunder and lightning are still roaring!
1999
translated by Nikmah Sarjono
Jamal D. Rahman
WOUND CAN NOT RETAIN THE PAIN
We, the boiled tin, become
breaking bubbles in the bottom of lava,
struggling to hold on inside a burning breast,
inside a bruised chest
the wound in my poem
can no longer retain any pain
Mother. Mother. Mother.
2000
translated by Nikmah Sarjono
Jamal D. Rahman
ON THE MOUNTAINSIDE OF THE DRY SEASON
On the mountainside of the dry season,
how many seasons have come and go?
Your cries has dried on that mountainside.
Withered, and shattered
become a slab of prayer:
you pry up my stone,
but you don’t break its sufferings
you dig up my weeping,
but you don’t shed its tears
2000
translated by Nikmah Sarjono
Jamal D. Rahman
BENEATH THE WINGS OF THE NIGHT
Beneath the wings of the night,
the hills scrape on solitude
the chill broods on fire,
cuts the wind within hurricane’s embrace,
makes bright red slices,
until blood can no longer be hurt
but behind the hills that crowded
with the cries of the children of the sun,
the wind dried. Restlessness rains. And I heard
the twitters of birds caged in the woods.
Burnt. Cremated alone
behind that hill, I bowed
with an injured prayer
2001
translated by Nikmah Sarjono
Jamal D. Rahman
TWILIGHT HAS HATCHED
I will only sacrifice my rib to be made a flute
for the sounds adored by the wind. Or even typhoon.
So when I looked at the dim of the early twilight,
I knew: it has hatched from the tears of my rib
2002
translated by Nikmah Sarjono
Jamal D. Rahman
CARRYING THUNDER
I heard the rain’s restlessness, clinking, scissoring time.
Then I cried: the clouds always save some frequencies.
Glowing. Thundering. Striking everything that comes
everything that goes. Only my yearning. Only my yearning
considers the drizzle. Before the ocean spills on the black soil…
You cried too, brother. But keep on crying. The jingling sounds
of a harp still you hear, as I still hear the restlessness of rain
jingles. Scissors. Keep on crying, before your silence
thundering…
The sky splits. Through the curving rainbow, I grasped after
a slice of prayer. Twining the ruins of my years
and plunge them into acid. And when you came singing
drizzle’s yearning, I still carrying thunder
booms like a canon, like a sickle cuts the sky….
2002
translated by Nikmah Sarjono
Jamal D. Rahman
O, BLUENESS THAT CRASHED MY SOUL
How deep does the sky dig the chasm of time? Too much
that needs to be buried. But memories have to stay remembered,
so that your heart will always be implanted, touching the sky,
and pointing at a certain height where you will
explode the rage of the Earth
you scratch the stars until they become the blueness
in my solar plexus. My anxiety dropped at the glare
of a knife, who stared at you with quiet slashes
How deeper will the sky dig the chasm of time?
Does the blueness of the sky, the blueness of the sea,
the blueness of my heart, not deep enough
for the earth’s anger and the knife’s fury?
O, blueness that soothes my heart
O, blueness that crashed my soul
2002
translated by Nikmah Sarjono
Jamal D. Rahman
THE RUINS OF LIGHT
It is a long time indeed, waiting for you under the ruins of light.
Until pieces of time hollowed out the crater in my heart.
Can’t you hear my weaken moans become the cliffs
in your valley of love? They steeped, abrupted, rocked.
But my weaken moans are your faithfulness
lulls my nasty deeds
No decree is more divine than the ruins of light.
Thus, so deep now the meaning awaits:
crater waits for the wind to catch the silence from a raging spirit.
Cliff waits for the crying stone, longing for lava sediments
2002
translated by Nikmah Sarjono
Jamal D. Rahman
SPINNING THE HOUR HAND OF THE SUN
We spin the hour hand of the sun, rapidly running
towards you, with wounded time. Days knocking on
our doors. For us to open another path into another continent.
Running along blacken asphalt, after being burned by charcoal stove,
before being diffused by dusty gravels. Day by day
chases after each other at the top of the hour hand
in the ravine of a waterfall. Stabbing one another, leaping
and jumping, chewing the stones. We hunt death with a needle,
seek for life by diving into a lake
flaming stones drown us in noisy pieces. Twining the soil
of the hillside, squeezing all the pain at the bottom of the wound.
Then we resurrect a thousand antelopes, a thousand horses
within the remains of our prayers. We want to run together
with a thousand pronged horns on the fields, with
a thousand trots stomping amidst the dust
we will keep on running. Spinning the hour hand of the sun
2002
translated by Nikmah Sarjono
Jamal D. Rahman 