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  The following poems have been reprinted by permission. To obtain a complete copy of the book, contact us.

 

  
 

We are Fishermen's Children

Written by a survivor of the Aceh tsunami

(excerpt)

 

...That wave continues to run like a vicious army

Chasing us who are running in any direction

Silencing the screams of frightened children

God’s remembrance held back, the call to prayer cut short

There is no other God but You

Thousands of us helplessly lay

Sunken like paper boats

Our souls flying

Like cotton thrust by storm

Yes, only that once

In minutes the wave returned home

The ocean calmed

Leaving pain swimming on this land

In our million hearts.

 

We are fishermen’s children, days counting waves

Painting the full moon in an ancient tide

Spying on a turtle laying her eggs

Building sandcastles while

Imagining father and mother spending their afternoons there

Now we find quiet in tents

Silence aware from crashing waves

 

We are fishermen’s children

The sound of crashing waves is us chanting God

The white sand is our prayer mat

The sea is our stomach

Our hunger

Our thirst

 

O look at those boats going towards

The traces of our village that is silent without laughter

A coast fragrant with pine

The whisper of our breathing is trapped here

Let us get closer

To pick among the strewn pieces of wood

For pillars of our new shack.

 

D. Kemalawati

Banda Aceh, 18 February 2005

 

 

  
 

Artifacts of Death

 

My beautiful son, baked black

home from the tsunami waters

where he and his brothers and some old farts

towed donated fishing boats

to villages who lost all.

They had 300 boats,

but they need only one now

because, they lost most of their people.

The dead don’t eat fish,

Quite the opposite...

 

Thor shows me a collection, gifts from Acehnese survivors

an old war bayonet, used to kill many rebels.

His sweaty hand opens to show me tiger’s teeth.

  He unfolds a plastic body bag, sees my eyes

and says, “Don’t worry mom, it’s never been used.”

 

I send my sons to Aceh; this is their school,

“Earthquake High”

where the sea eats everything level.

 

The Buddha sat under a tree, attacked by his own fear of death,

or fear of life,

until every sword that pierced his heart

became a flower.

He had it easy.

I immerse my children in annihilation

They come home to show me what remains.

Is the heart indestructible?

Or, do we burnish it shiny, to the density of stone?

What kind of mother have I become?

I give them bitter learning and cruel medicine.

They come home and hug me.

  Robin Lim

 

  

To Love a Wife

 

Bang Hanafi had a wife. She visited his leaf-enhanced dreams

to tell him, where to find their baby daughter.

She told him to dig under a tree, by a shaft of sunlight, where she and

the baby were waiting.

 

He led his few friends with picks, and an old shovel, to the deep mud.

When she was uncovered, he said she was beautiful.

“In her life she was black and thin. She had wished to be

plump, and white, and now she has grown big, pale. I only wish I had

some fragrant oil, to help her smell a little better.”

                                                                                   

Robin Lim

 

 

 

Tsunami Notebook: Poems Washed Up From the Sea of Tears

Half Angel Press

Bali, Indonesia

October 2005

  
 

 

  
     

Robin Lim Support Organization

2000 N. Court St. #6D

Fairfield, Iowa USA 52556

641-472-3880