Flying Garuda over Java

Flying Garuda over Java

On the early morning flight

from Jakarta to Surabaya

secure a seat at a starboard window.

Edge out of the night

and contemplate one of nature’s

most sublime spectacles,

what Burke put in another dimension,

before the clouds throw themselves

together out of modesty

and constitute what Aldous Huxley

called “white islands”,

crags of volcanic condensation

(while trying to forget

Garuda’s record of aviation

disasters and hardware problems—

Garuda waking

in an enamelled pavilion

high in the branches of the world-tree—

Garuda the serpent-destroyer,

whose wings when flying

chant the Veda).

These are the twenty cones of Java.

They could be those of Io,

mooning around Jupiter—

and a little farther away

Bromo and Semeru

swimming in their violet haze.

All of them sacred sites

on the most densely populated

island in the world,

caldera demanding appeasement

from the anger-managers—

even volcanoes want to live on surplus.

*

And the file of tourists

trudging through the sand seas

around the Tengger crater

to Lava View Lodge

and the lakes of turquoise sulphur

have to register their impact:

lotus-swimming nymphs,

Buddha smiling in his rotunda,

all the pavilions of our civilised acts

have been built cheek by jowl

with the natural terrors

we mean to escape.

Iain Bamforth