Free LONTAR issue #1 by Jason Erik Lundberg (editor)

famished ogre.

    8. Patronage

    I held my head up as a puppet rajah,
    a cut-out figure in this modern wayang  
    hoping that the better men would come
    and see us as we were—a cultured race
    with music, dances, shadow puppets, sculpture.
    Our wayang of poetry on the stage
    may have shared its fine intelligence,
    but to them our Ramayana was child's play.
    I tried to fuse the last vestiges of power
    into an epic dance and antique classics:
    my biggest shows exerted old prestige
    with flames and lights. The fire-rockets
    announced my position with the people.
    Yes, this was my sentimental zenith—
    nurturing art and artisans: from childhood—
    little girls with eye and finger mudras
    had such refinement that old men wept with joy.
    Therefore, every village had a stage,
    an enclosure with the mask-face of each god,
    hanging like a council of Time's elders.
    The gifted ones, the blessed by Gods among us
    breathed in the pranic blue breath of the Spirit
    through deer and peacock dances, tiger hunts
    with elephants on stage. The ultimate
    observance was to play a hero-god,
    saving Sita with a monkey army;
    or going primal with a matted body—
    our frightening archipelago Barong ,
    awakened from our prehistoric epochs
    when gods were rivers, clouds, volcano outcrops.
    Such actors wore the mask with psychic skill,
    fixing dragon movements in their limbs
    to bless for crops, or to kill which means protect ;
    yet even they could not restrain the Ghosts
    with pale skins not living in our world
    who came with gunboat manners, iron muskets,
    and burning lust—all ravenous for nutmeg.

    9. In the Temple of the Dead

    For years, I'd bought them off by selling slaves
    for plantation work on Dutch Batavia.
    When it was clear that no amount of swords
    and elephant charges with brave warriors
    could match five warships of those hard marines,
    there was only one thing left for us to do:
    to take the moral ground before the guns.
    Actors donned their masks carved from pale  
    Hibiscus wood. Yes, it was time to show
    our pride, our race, our culture and our faith
    with the trance-inducing dance of the Barong.
    At first, the monkeys seated on the stones
    in a torso-swaying circle, move their arms
    this way and that. Their ululating throats
    chant to Rangda, hairy protégé of Kali,
    Then, the banished queen of witches springs
    into the Temple of the Dead.  

                                With deafening drums
    she dances on the stones, hard-footed, whorish,  
    a baby-gorging goddess of revenge,
    dispersing her black magic through white silk—
    so all will turn their krisblades on themselves.
    But then, the Barong enters. Through stone pillars
    he lunges forth with dragon fangs and claws,
    lashing out with a coiled razor tail
    above the front rank heads of the Dutch marines,
    then spins with a final swipe of lightning
    and turns the monkey bellies to dragon hide.
    Drums and gamelan gongs reach their peak.
    Kris blades snap on skin, and the monkeys live.
    Rangda, mad and disarmed by deeper magic
    disappears between the temple pillars,
    goaded by the Barong and monkey troupe.
    I was glad because the Dutch were sweating.
    Terror is the palpable Barong ,
    a rumbling from the earthquake ring of fire.
    It was conjured from the guts of an epic poem,
    warming us up for the crux of our rebellion.

    10. Denouement

    Light had already plugged the mouth of darkness
    in a realm the Dutch invaders could not see.
    All that was left was to sprinkle consecration:
    so my High Brahmin took his jeweled kris
    and stabbed his loving rajah in the heart.
    My noble retinue of fifteen hundred
    dressed in the finest silk embroidery,
    women in sarongs with their breasts bare—
    my faithful queen and family, pre-rehearsed
    slashed and thrust and fell upon their blades.
    From highest elders to my smallest son
    all achieved through the discipline of art
    an honorable death to consecrate this rite.
    Our attendants, chosen for the after-tasks
    stood in awe