Eventhough it's October now
The good thing about going home to your parent's house is that you have the chance to dig around your old books. Some of them made you doubt your past book taste. The others just getting better by getting read after additional couple of years of life. This one is just great. I had Robert Frost's collection on back burn in Singapore, whom I started to read at about the same age, but SDD's poems caught me in different way. It's interesting that the poem that I love now are not the same as previously. I remember to love his ever-so-famous poem about how to love, but the one that hit me now is this one.
KAMI BERTIGA
dalam kamar ini kami bertiga:
aku, pisau, dan kata -
kalian tahu, pisau barulah pisau kalau ada darah di matanya
tak peduli darahku atau darah kata
THE THREE OF US
inside the room the three of us:
me, knife, and word -
do you know, knife is a knife when it has blood in its eyes
no matter my blood or word's blood
(forgive the clunky translation, not worthy of him)
Rather viscious & it took me almost as hard as Margaret Atwood's poem:
you fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
Isn't poem great? it can slam you with emotion just by a couple of lines. There are a couple more of those that I swear I will learn by heart. Memorizing poem seems to me now, a better use of my brain space.