The Panic of Earth's Time

Muticolored sarongs, white shirts
wrap bodies like bunches of flowers
whose petals are baskets and palm trays
brimming with bread, rice, jasmine,
papaya for Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva.

People in hundreds, slow-moving sea,
through dusty roads, rattling fronds, flow
to the outlet of the cremation site.
Bamboo pagoda nesting Lembu-sarcophagus
rises, towers over trees, roofs, derailing birds.

In the scorching morning flames flicker, fry
sizzle on metal gongs from gamelans that jolt
along slithering fluted notes and thousands bells,
in tin tones, bronze smoke up in sky steeples.

Tension in electric bodies; a shiver along my spine,
I can't find my role in the rite. Sweaty hands smear
smoke, fear, cinnamon, incense on blurred eyes.
Fire tongues lick the lembu, twist in the breeze,
engulf lembu, corpse, leap skyward, lift soul to Heaven.

Faces in a daze; quaking figures go round the pyre,
toss offerings in high-pitched notes;
gongs bolt, boom at the temples, bells overpower
crackling fire. White glimpses of teeth smile me
into the circle to join utter joy as ashes will be body
again,. And I walk perpendicular to them,
my way separated by the very concept of death.

Mesmerized, I hear my voice repeat I am fire
wind, water, ether and earth; words come
from my hollow inside; my lips part, breathe
smoke, faith, relinquished hope, choked hope
in dry throat.

Flames, like locusts in grass, bite away all that
is human and limited. Silence falls, heavy;
ashes ascend the air; a fine dust of blue
and gray, particles of faith float above
the panic of Earth's time.

© Paula Grenside

Commentary:

I was invited to take part in the ceremony by my Balinese guide. I was quite reluctant, at first, as I had read cremation has become sort of a tourists' attraction. It was an experience I'll never forget. Back at home I studied my notes and wrote the first draft, half way between prose and poetry. The reactions in workshops were positive but some found the topic more suitable for prose while some others suggested more compression and poetry. A few called it a Haibun and said some lines were Haiku-like in their epiphany.

I think the mistake I made in the first three or four drafts was wanting to tell and show everything; it seemed each detail was necessary. Yet in so doing the experience was diluted, the complete involvement of senses lost.

What I did then was to close my eyes and relive the deepest emotions from the initial disbelief and almost fear of the enormous crowd pressing to the gradual absorbing of the visual, the sounds, odors and the vibrations I perceived from the natives and the final yielding to what I was living with them, a detachment from earthly blindness, a beginning starting with death. Their Hinduism is a Philosophy of Life rather than a religion and I did share it for some memorable moments. The Panic of Earth's time is for us, not for them.

I rewrote this poem till, reading it, I was able to be there again, smell the air, hear those bells and exotic instruments, see colors and ashes, ascend, once again the earthly dimension.