i.m. K.B. killed East Timor

Seven years, hill top terminus of your grief:
these mists, these veils. Let's say,
               refuge,
and the pure five tone vowels in his name.
Let's say
               Negri Sembilan - the seven Malay nations.
You sweep the stairs, so at ease,
an exiled Sumatran temple dancer.
When the sun goes down behind the mountain
this bungalow's your chaise longue, stretched
               into a cloud.
Imagine sunset were a healing balm,
dream of dhows on the Indian Ocean.

Brother Kamal, nostalgic in his letters
to you, big sister. In the end
what's an education overseas?
"Betterment"?
Down south in the land of the long white cloud
he modified his vowels
and whispered "Aotearoa" down the phone.
He became his school's star wing back
then to Sydney and a course in politics
and Randwick girls voted Yes,
they would love that boy forever.

~

He buttonholed the foreign Minister once
on some ASEAN junket. Kamal the anarchist and NGO
demanded Why and Why Not.
In a Timor village, snapshot of him and the village chief
arm in arm, their newest saint, and he got fame,
long haired kid who hitched to Maliana
the boys in green (who'd done the cemetery the day before)
would execute
then dump in burning lalang grass.

Oh no, he was never any trouble, the teachers said.
We cannot blame "foreign influences".

~

Now he's back where he can speak.
His name you carved on a stone in the rockery below the stairs.
The rickety stairs go under the house.
Beyond is breathtaking verdancy
a yellow bulldozer parked
on a future golf course lawn
in summation of our times.
A parliament of forest birds (last of the moralists) singing,
fly home from the coast
to roost on a pile of logged Maranti.

~

This is the last landing before the gorge,
montane, dense orchards, prime fruit.
Fruit picking teaches you to love snakes.
Having swept all the stairs we pick rambutans, pass them down
hand to hand, picking in the local drizzle the geographers call
"orographic rain".
Shed petals on a lily pond, frogs with breathing skins.
Higher branched fruit just drops into your hands.
Then evening we eat, waste nothing.
Having eaten the flesh we leave behind the spiralling peel
as if it offered justice - the red velcro skins of rambutans
left in a small blue bowl.