The Case of Hurricane Indo
“…and sometimes I feel
a cold current grazing my back,
a Northwestern wind
that freezes Amsterdam’s canals in one night.
I skate past wearhouses,
anise milk and splitpea soup stands,
through tulipbulb fields behind dikes
that are lined with windmills.
But then I’ll see shadows
of cockatoo wings
that spread wider across Javan coffeefields,
hear shattering coconuts
and sounds of a gamelan
left by an open window,
when breezes of a perspiring sun
suck across the island.
As I raise my lids again
I spin in darkness,
hear air whirling around me–
hot then cold and always wet
inside the eye of this hurricane;
I look down the narrowing tube,
see ocean,
and I want to measure her depth.
When I try to join the winds around me,
let them fling me away, into her,
like they rip flowerbulbs out of the frozen ground
and hurl templetops, papayas off heavy branches,
their speed keeps me suspended,
and I’m left above her surface
doodling infinitely
like a paintbrush coloring silence
between Holland and Indonesia.”
Turning the tapeplayer off
Dr. Semio thought of the girl
who had thrown herself down on his carpet,
arms and legs flailing,
and opened his casebook to write thanatos,
and then, post-colonial psychosis
