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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE BALINESE WITCH DOCTOR, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography First Line: He sits in the circle of his simmering Last Line: Baby chicken stirs in moonlight's shadows. Subject(s): Indonesia; Religion; Dutch East Indies; Theology | |||
He sits in the circle of his simmering pressure lamp. (First you must find its private sound.) Outside the compound's wall, frogs ribbit in the moon silvered paddies. (Its own combination of vowels and consonants.) Night after night he studies the thin palm-leaf books of grandfather, father (because evil answers to its name), the mantras, the etched drawings, clues to a new demon generation of poisons, killers rising from mosquito coils, the sweet perfume of insecticides. Under frangipani's pinwheel blooms (you call evil like a dog) he's spent the day on fortunes told to giggles of girls, charms composed to banish roaring spirits from dreams, water blessed to rinse away witch-spelled insanity (and it obeys, begs, sits, plays dead), he listens to his granddaughter sleeping in rough bouts of breath between her parents. He scours for the demon, labors for her breath, while on the family altar the down on a headless baby chicken stirs in moonlight's shadows. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MYSTIC BOUNCE by TERRANCE HAYES MATHEMATICS CONSIDERED AS A VICE by ANTHONY HECHT UNHOLY SONNET 11 by MARK JARMAN SHINE, PERISHING REPUBLIC by ROBINSON JEFFERS THE COMING OF THE PLAGUE by WELDON KEES A LITHUANIAN ELEGY by ROBERT KELLY |
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