Inrasara

Translated by Phan Khế

I live in a town where all things go in
reverse. The bushes grow reversely,
shrink smaller back into seeds, and roll back
into the past-life seeds. The river flows

reversely, very swiftly. My friends,
my nephews and nieces, my siblings, and
my parents walk reversely, and
steadily become smaller, younger.

Being uncertain between the line
of night and day, life and death. The
truth of the Hời ghost is only an uncertain
legend appearing at the border of

We, the children of five, six, seven liked to
play by holding hands around the Kuao but
still our hand couldn’t meet. The Kuao tree
that my mother called the menacing deity

Translation by Joseph Dovinh

Perhaps it has been one, two hundred
years, and more than that, he had
waited. Waited for the boats. Arriving in
the afternoons, just as the guru had promised.

Story 1. Running away from diseases
Translation by Joseph Dovinh

Mother took my brothers and sisters and I into hiding
in sixty-three. Nowhere far, mother took us
to an aunt’s house three streets away. Mother
said: let’s sleep over at the lonely aunt’s, I

The sun has started above the April hill
started earlier than in previous centuries
when the ocean has yet to stir
earlier than the memories of the ceremony elders.

In this difficult beginning
Only a beckoning, stranger
Than that of a sea-cobra

Ginang
Pagalaung ginang pagalaung ginang pagalaung
The drums thunder
Pagalaung pagalaung pagalaung

Living means gratefulness – gratitude is
beyond the horizon of calculation
gratefulness makes us grown up

I could not choose to be a child of the President of France
or a grandchild in direct line of the King of Brunei