Jennifer Mackenzie is a poet and reviewer, focusing on work from and about the Asian region. She makes regular appearances at festivals and conferences, including the Ubud, Makassar and Irrawaddy Festivals. Her most recent work is ‘Borobudur and Other Poems‘ (Lontar, Jakarta 2012).

 

Artaud and the Ecstatic Transfer

Exposition colonial internationale, Paris 1931

 

                                    ‘Who am I?

                                    Where do I come from?

                                    I am Antonin Artaud

                                    and I say this

                                    as I know how to say this

                                    immediately

                                    you will see my present body

                                    burst into fragments

                                    and remake itself

                                    in ten thousand notorious

                                    aspects’

 

                        and how does time flow?

the gesture/s and the fan

flickering across continents

the gamelan’s

ecstatic pinning of the minimal and the decorative

to a percussive consciousness

pirouette through the horizontal mirror of fingers

fly into theatre’s mango grove and

marketplace                 where

the golden heart outlives winter

 

transparent pick of the gamelan

 

                                                            *

the priest predicted rain

for this afternoon

and it is gently falling

over the rice-fields

over bright lamplight

rain a soft gauze

onto the black night

crickets chirp, geckos

dart over walls, seeking

secret hiding places

among columns of insects

marching over plants

refreshed and sensible to light

 

*

from the black and ruined forest

the dancer springs

frontally illuminated

swaddled chrysalis

fingers flickering butterfly wings

defiant of the

dark unspoken gloom of

trees, mountains withholding

unnavigable springs

frantic hollow drumbeats score

a gestured metaphysic

mirrored interplay of

moonrise eyes, pouting lips

head travelling shoulder to shoulder

as if on rollers

rain singing over instruments

sharded flights of sound

inflected, airborne from the back of the throat

syncopated feet, hot and dexterous

stamping crackling leaves and twigs

from a percussive earth

conjuring dry seething plants

gulping rain,

beckon the ecstatic drummer

 

*

ballroom where the

lover-dance

undid me

waltzing over snow

in flaming sunset

 

*

the gamelan of death

is coming along the river bank

I hide in a hollow              from

wild unleashed

I place the mask over the collapsing

portraiture

mask and its double

I am the fearful aspect of

the Tiger, I am – and do not question it –

I am the Other