Scent of Wood

Adhimas Prasetyo
Translated by Liswindio Apendicaesar

-from Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami

1/

I recognize you as the wood scent in Komagome,

the same scent that wafts from your hair.

although I’m always wrong recalling your face.

so much of drizzle at that dark night,

when the cold and my fingers were fighting to crawl

at your nape hair.

and then I made a pilgrim at the shrine of your body,

I was the first person who came

offering a prayer as well as ruining it.

so many times I stuck a heartbeat

to your chest. you cried, my temples were wet.

it wasn’t my heart that you wanted.

we’re always restless because of a question.

is’t possible to betray the dead?

Naoko,

memories might be a painful hunger,

and we never give it the right proper bread.

until a misty morning comes, and forest

so serene. rigging snare fulfills

your age, while I carry on the pain.

2/

we always learn that falling in love

is just an agonizing loss.

and we repeatedly revel in it.

and when I awoke I was alone

this bird has flown.

you keep playing The Beatles, when

the smell of nicotine walks down your cracking chest.

please know, Reiko, though it hurts

everywhere people won’t stop

falling in love.

3/

Midori, I want to be a river and flow

slowly to the quiet places in your

map box. places where you hide my coast.

I come to you as a grip

of heart that’s so tight and beating.

we’ll burn more nights and houses

as we delight in the scent of our scorching bodies.

where am I.

I don’t know where I am now.

only a long corridor, passing bodies.

I think it’s the place that reunites you and the past.