Leni Marlina’s Bilingual Poem Collection: “THE BIRD THAT FLIES CARRYING YOUR NAME”
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THE BIRD THAT FLIES CARRYING YOUR NAME
Poem by Leni Marlina
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Baca juga: Musik Literasi" di Zync Space and Cafe, Kota Batu Menyegarkan Dunia
O you who are there.
Though morning has not yet fully opened its eyes,
I awaken you with the voice of dew.
Between two clusters of dew,
a bird is sharpening its voice
against the bones of light.
I speak your name.
Not loudly.
Only like roots
exchanging salt for soil.
Your name moves slowly
into the throat of that bird,
then becomes something
that no longer resembles language:
A grain of fragrance.
A color no eye has yet discovered.
A faint warmth on a stone
after the river has changed its age.
The bird takes flight.
Not toward you.
The sky knows no direction.
It flies into a distance
that keeps growing itself.
Beneath it,
the rice fields are memorizing the shape of coming rain.
Mist herds its losses
from hill to hill.
And time—
time sits upon a tree stump
peeling away its own skin.
I wait for you like moss
on the northern side of stone.
I wait for you like wild seeds
beneath the tongue of the dry season.
I wait for you like light
trapped for years
inside the sap.
So I listen
to things that do not move.
To bamboo stalks
that keep the sound of rain
without ever speaking it.
To the earth
that conceals a thousand roots
yet still lifts the forest.
To dew
that dies every morning
without losing faith
in the sun.
The bird carrying your name is still flying.
Now its wings are filled
with the dust of dawn.
Its beak smells of young leaves.
Its eyes hold the reflection
of something that has not yet happened.
I do not know
when it will arrive.
But the same morning
that grows its voice
between two clusters of dew
is growing as well
inside your blood.
And perhaps that is why
when a bird sings,
the air around me
seems to open an invisible window,
while far away,
without either of us knowing,
something long separated
is shedding its skin
into one season for us.
–
Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia, 2026
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THE BIRD THAT KEEPS SEASONS IN ITS BEAK
Poem by Leni Marlina
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You may still be sleeping there.
Morning comes with pockets of mist not yet sewn by the wind.
A bird perches on the highest branch of light.
Its beak is tightly closed,
as though it were hiding something.
I think it is a seed.
Or a fragment of sky that fell when night shed its skin.
But when it spreads its wings,
I see seasons emerging from between its feathers:
the rainy season, still wet with the scent of earth,
the dry season, holding the sound of cracks along the river’s back,
and the season of loss, which always grows faster than grass.
The bird does not sing.
It merely flies across the valleys of time.
Beneath it,
the trees unfold their leaves like old letters.
The mountains bow their heads.
The ancient stones move their memories a few centimeters closer to the moss.
I follow its shadow.
But a shadow, it turns out, never stays in the same place.
It moves from earth to water, from water to cloud,
from cloud to something that does not yet have a name.
Toward evening,
the bird disappears,
as you disappeared long ago.
Yet the air remains filled with the fragrance of the season left behind.
And I understand:
some encounters do not come to stay.
They come so that the world may remember again how to change.
–
Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia, 2026
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THE NEST THE WIND LEFT BEHIND
Poem by Leni Marlina
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Look!
On the final branch of an old tree, a nest hangs.
It is not empty.
Inside it remain the warmth of feathers,
the scent of rain that has passed,
and a morning that failed to hatch.
Feel it!
The wind comes every day.
It caresses the edge of the nest like someone not yet finished saying goodbye.
Leaves fall one by one.
The seasons move house.
Even the sky changes the color of its eyes.
But the nest remains.
Not because it is strong.
But because it knows:
there are things that cannot be carried away,
not even by time.
This morning,
a young bird alights.
It does not know who once lived there.
It does not know the songs that once filled its branches.
Yet it brings a blade of new grass.
Then another.
And another.
I watch it work until the sun grows full.
That is when we understand:
nature never erases loss.
It only plants life in the same place until the wound learns to become a home.
–
Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia, 2026
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WHEN THE SKY LEARNS TO BECOME A RIVER
Poems by Leni Marlina
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One morning
the sky forgot that it was the sky.
It began to flow.
At first, as a thin line of light between the leaves.
Then as a blue whisper creeping along the backs of hills.
The clouds drifted away.
The sun became a golden fish swimming slowly through currents of air.
The birds lifted their wings like little boats.
I stood at the edge of the day.
Watching time float together with the leaves.
Watching memories whirl like a vortex going nowhere.
Far upstream,
a mountain was melting into prayer.
Far at the mouth,
the sea opened both its arms to receive everything that leaves.
Nothing sinks.
Nothing arrives.
Everything only changes form.
Including me.
Including you.
All of us.
Including the names we once thought more eternal than water.
–
Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia, 2026
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THE TREE THAT GROWS SHADOWS
Poems by Leni Marlina
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Do you know?
In a courtyard rarely visited by the seasons,
a tree grows.
Its trunk is old.
Its roots enter the earth deeper than memory.
Every morning it grows a shadow.
Not leaves.
Not flowers.
But a shadow.
A shadow stretching toward silent roads.
A shadow touching the windows of empty houses.
A shadow sitting quietly on the shoulders of people hiding their sorrow.
I ask the tree:
why not fruit?
The tree does not answer.
The wind speaks instead.
It says, fruit feeds the body.
But a shadow gives a place to rest for a weary soul.
Since that day,
I often sit beneath it.
Watching the sun carve temporary shapes.
Watching time fall slowly from branch to branch.
And when evening comes,
I find something I have been seeking all this time:
not every life must blossom in order to be useful.
–
Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia, 2026
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WHEN THE BIRD BORROWS THE BONES OF MORNING
Poems by Leni Marlina
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Morning is still sleeping beneath the eyelids of the marsh.
A bird digs up the bones of light that the mist buried last night.
Its beak is smeared with yellow, smelling of wet roots.
It pecks at a little sun growing beneath the fingernails of grass.
From that wound,
the sky releases a sound.
A feathered sound.
A sound whose every strand holds the remnant of rain from an age long weathered away.
In the distance, the river is combing its hair with a comb of fish scales.
Ancient stones chew their own shadows.
The hills open their backs, revealing the joints of memories the earth has hidden all this time.
I see time.
It sits upon a stump.
Its body is covered with the bite marks of seasons.
From time to time it tears off its skin and hangs it out to dry on the clothesline of the wind.
Nothing is strange.
In this land,
sorrow indeed grows like mushrooms between the teeth of sunlight.
While the bird keeps flying.
Its wings scatter the dust of age.
And with every beat,
one tree loses a memory,
one cloud sheds a dream,
one drop of dew learns how to become the sea.
–
Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia, 2026
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WHEN WE STITCH YOUR TORN SKY
Poems by Leni Marlina
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We found your name
caught upon a thorn of wind
on the back of the season.
At that moment
the sky was pulling rusted nails
from its chest.
Birds flew low,
carrying fragments of children’s laughter
scattered along the village dirt roads.
The river carried them
to the estuary.
Its waters had begun to forget
the taste of mud
that once raised them.
We saw thin rice stalks
walking from the fields to the granary.
But the granary was busy
counting gold
behind the walls of its belly.
In certain houses
rice piled up like harvest seasons.
In other houses
the cooking pots echoed empty
throughout the night.
Then rain fell
upon roofs of tin
already wet.
While the earth cracked
licking the dust
from the mouth of drought.
We heard money.
It hissed
beneath the skin of the forest.
Chewing meranti trees.
Munching hills.
Swallowing rivers.
Night after night
it carried villages
into the bellies of trucks,
leaving behind stumps,
dust,
and names that had lost their addresses.
But deep beneath the earth,
the roots still exchanged news.
The seeds were still conferring.
The worms were writing the road home
in the dark scripture of the earth.
And young rice
quietly sharpened courage
within the joints of its stalk.
The fields began to forget
the tracks of gun barrels.
The river learned the fish again.
The mangroves rewove
the torn edge of the sea.
The village children
raised their laughter
until it grew higher
than the fences of fear.
And justice—
a hornbill
long hunted by greed.
It flies
carrying forest seeds
from wounded mountains
to soil that has nearly forgotten
how to grow.
If your sky tears again,
call us.
We will come
carrying needles
made from the bones of light.
Carrying thread
spun from
the sweat of farmers,
the oars of fishermen,
the prayers of mothers,
and the dreams of children
that keep on growing.
Then we will stitch the horizon back together.
So that rice and secondary crops
will not be strangers to their planters.
So that the sea
will not be far from its fishermen.
So that the forest
will not forget the names of its trees.
So that rain
will not choose its address.
And so that there will be no more fences
between hunger and harvest,
between river and thirst,
between the earth
and its owners.
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Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia, 2026
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About the Poet – Leni Marlina
Leni Marlina is a poet, writer, translator, and academic in the Department of English, Faculty of Languages and Arts, Universitas Negeri Padang, where she has served as a civil-service lecturer since 2006. Her creative and scholarly work traverses a wide range of fields—including poetry, fiction, essays, literary criticism, translation, and literacy studies—reflecting her enduring commitment to language as a medium of reflection, empathy, and human dignity.
Among her recent publications are the poetry collections The Beloved Teachers (2025) and L-BEAUMANITY: Love, Beauty, and Humanity (2025), as well as the educational trilogy English Stories for Literacy (2024–2025). Through these works, she explores the intersection of literature, education, and humanity, regarding writing not merely as a creative practice but also as a moral dialogue with the world. Beyond poetry, Leni is actively engaged in writing short stories, essays, literary criticism, and reviews. She also translates literary and journalistic texts for various national and international digital platforms. Her writings frequently address education, culture, literacy, peace, and human values, positioning literature as a bridge between knowledge, imagination, and social consciousness.
Alongside her academic career, Leni is actively involved in literary journalism and literacy advocacy. She contributes as a freelance writer and editor to digital media platforms such as Suara Anak Negeri, Suara Anak Negeri News and Negeri News, where she publishes articles on education, literature, culture, and humanitarian issues. Both platforms share a common mission: “to give voice to those who cannot speak for themselves.” Leni is also the founder and chair of several literary and literacy communities, including PPIPM-Indonesia, Poetry Pen International Community (PPIC), Littalk-C Literary Talk Community, Translation Practice Community (Trans-PC), and World Children’s Literature Community (WCLC). Through these communities, she promotes international literary dialogue, translation practice, and the development of cross-cultural literacy.
She is also an active member of several writers’ organizations, including SatuPena Sumatera Barat, KEAI, and PLS. Since 2012, she has been affiliated with the Victorian Writers Centre in Australia, and since 2024, she has also been a member of the Shanghai Huifeng International Literary Association (ACC SHILA). Leni’s contributions to the literary world have received recognition at both national and international levels. In 2025, she received the Best Writer Award from SatuPena Sumatera Barat at the International Minangkabau Literary Festival (IMLF-3), chaired by Sastri Bakry. In the same year, she was also honored with the ACC International Literary Prize 2025 by the ACC Shanghai Huiyu International Literary Creative Media Centre, and received an award from the international literary community The Rhythm of Vietnam.
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The Indonesian version of the poem collection above is available to be accessed by public through the official link below:
Kumpulan Puisi Leni Marlina: “BURUNG YANG TERBANG MEMBAWA NAMAMU”
