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    Borobudur
    Borobudur
    Borobudur
    Ebook114 pages36 minutes

    Borobudur

    By Jennifer MacKenzie

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    About this ebook

    At the time of the construction of Borobudur in the ninth century, Buddhism had been established in Java for several centuries. Mackenzie’s Borobudur, an exquisite long poem, tells the story of its legendary architect, Gunavarman, and of Indonesia’s mystical monument with cultural understanding, sensitivity and great feeling. Like Gunavarman by the poem’s end, Mackenzie becomes ‘a dot on the horizon’ leaving us stilled in silence. ‘Like turning a wonderfully textured and beautifully glazed vessel around and around, the chronology of Jennifer Mackenzie's Borobudur, is progressed while eluding linearity. Her legend of Gunavarman, Javanese Buddhism's almost mythical priest-architect, reminds one of Hesse's Siddhartha with the parallel reality she creates for the book's protagonists. Borobudur is a memorable invention, utterly present as it succours both history and imagination. The poem's tropical atmospheres and correspondingly spiced language, the sumptuous detail and layers of story, girdle the poem as it, in its marvellous stead, encircles the monument which time almost forgot.’ Kris Hemensley
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDoctorZed Publishing
    Release dateAug 23, 2011
    ISBN9781921924156
    Borobudur
    Author

    Jennifer MacKenzie

    Jennifer MacKenzie vit en Ontario où elle a fait ses études en sciences de la nutrition. Elle est l’auteure de nombreux livres de cuisine et elle publie régulièrement dans les magazines, dont Canadian Living, en tant que spécialiste en économie domestique.

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      Book preview

      Borobudur - Jennifer MacKenzie

      Kukai

      LAMENTATION FOR MY BELOVED STUDENT, THE RONG’GENG

      She was raucous in the early days

      my brother, Kanwa, was holding in his compound some

      celebration for our father she was a gate-crasher but her

      wit transformed indignation into merriment

      Kanwa’s dancers, whom he was training to move like puppet

      butterflies

      stepped aside to allow her garrulous cadences full scope

      the butt of her wit was an old man who shuffled along behind

      her

      he carried her belongings on a stick

      how merry were Kanwa’s guests

      how abject was this poor buffoon

      consort of my brother for a few short months he looking

      at his reflection in the clear water of the river Elo

      to avail himself of a particle of her presence the kain

      she had left bundled on the couch now a screen

      fixed to the rafters of his private pavilion

      the champaka flower abundant on green-netted silk and she

      the raining of pale gold in the mirror

      as a dancer she did not glide but kicked

      as if she were performing sanghyang djaran a smattering of

      learning

      consolidated itself in the bamboo shelter

      that was the beginnings of my school

      she argued dogma with the ferocity of a natural

      and he blamed me for her literacy

      her voice was the forest itself

      its density was the late afternoon

      its tangled undergrowth and yellow flowers brilliant as stars

      verandahs reflecting this turpitude

      found lightning to be their demon brother

      the ricochet of her voice could be no elision

      the bitter dust of his writing pencil

      he took to wandering himself nailing poems to the rafters

      of resting houses these poems implored that their words

      would find her, that she may in her wandering, rest

      at this or that sea coast or secluded forest, that she may look

      into

      his words as into a mirror and gaze upon her own beauty

      radiant as the asoka flower, supple as its boughs

      she looks into the mirror of his words

      curl of her lip the sky overcast beyond and the sea

      low down from the pavilion

      wooden rafters rattle in a strong wind

      the words blow about her among the rafters’ flowering vines

      lyrics scattered like grain

      the tempest blusters her kain still silk

      merchant town to the north

      beloved of the richest man there

      when she sang mangosteen was served

      dancing became a private ceremony

      twins born in pale moonlight

      begging at shrines

      twins dead from fever, cold

      a breast as black and withered

      as an old pandanus leaf

      which once carried a message of love

      she sang in the lowest of dens

      she dressed in a red smock garlanded with snow blossoms

      the men settled about her

      compassion fell into place on her face, the most difficult

      of puzzles

      she came to see me at the building site

      my brother did not appear

      we read the Buddhacarita together

      we debated when the liberation of wandering plunged into

      the extinction of craft

      she was the one to present me with new sandals

      after some weeks she left for the mountains

      when resident there I asked farmers news of her

      yes, they said, rags and a voice as pure as the sound

      of your singing bowl, Gunavarman

               at the last rainy season

      rain pouring over the verandah posts of her penultimate hut

      her eyes sheltering beneath a thatch of

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