Two Poems
John Mateer
UNSEEN
for Joan Marbeck
Though she grew up in Malacca,
as a child every evening cycled from her Convent school
and passed the ruined gateway of the Fort,
she never did see the ghost of the Dutch soldier,
headless, nor of the nun he loved.
— —
MURUGAN
In this Little India
a shopkeeper,
before closing up,
lights a small candle
atop a coconut, and,
facing the shop,
closing his eyes,
chanting, raises,
then with a metaphysical ferocity,
hurls that skull
at the shattered
road.
John Mateer is a poet, writer and curator. His latest books are Unbelievers, or 'The Moor', and João, and with the Dutch art historian Arvi Wattel, Invisible Genres: Two Essays on Iconoclasm. His The Quiet Slave: A History in Eight Episodes, a book in collaboration with the Cocos Malay communities of the Cocos-Keeling Island and the town of Katanning, has just been translated into German. John’s favourite ‘sea creature’ is the Inaccessible Island Rail — the world’s smallest living flightless bird found on an island south-west of the island of Tristan da Cunha. John’s great-grandmother’s family lived on the Island of Tristan for several generations. Photo by Daniel Terkl.