A tiger is not a goat, a goat is not a snake, and therefore a snake is neither tiger nor goat. Meanwhile, the mythological chimera is none of these and all of them at once—tiger, goat, and snake fused into a single creature.
In Indonesia, we have a human who seems descended from tiger and snake, and he certainly does not carry the meek blood of a goat. His name is Iwan Fals: “Ayahku harimau, ibuku ular / Nyanyikan tangis, marah, dan cinta.” The song is roaring with tiger energy.
Poetry, in many ways, resembles a chimera. It is not prose, not drama, not philosophy, not an aphorism, not advice, not a quote, not a prayer, and certainly not a pensée—for those who are not poets will inevitably turn into Pascal by accident.
If we were to visualize a poem: its title is the tiger, its stanzas and lines are the goat, and its final words are the snake. Reverse the composition—make the title the snake, the middle the goat, and the ending the tiger—and the poem becomes awkwardly back-heavy, like the padded bottom of a clown: strangely weighted, comical without trying.
Poetry is not even a chimera in the literal sense, for a chimera still reveals its components—one can point out each animal present. But when we look at Chairil Anwar, for instance, we see something wilder: a creature, a stray, an exile from its own pack. The animals within him are shadows, and poetry is made of such shadows—shadows that haunt both the poet and the reader.
Readers of poetry are similarly divided, classified according to the shadows that follow them.
First, there are the neck-vein readers: whether they read softly or shout, their neck tendons bulge dramatically. Their unspoken principle is: “God is closer than the jugular vein.” They are haunted by the performers of staged poetry contests—those eternal finalists who never win beyond the district level because the judges are always from the next county over. Many students, from middle school to university, carry this style. Their heads are tiger-heads. Protesters who scream but whose thoughts fall apart mid-chant belong to this species too.
Next come the husky-voiced readers, whose raspiness is neither genetic nor caused by inflamed throats. Their hoarseness is built from tangled heartbreak—loving and being loved in the most unfortunate ways—so they can only read poems that mirror their emotional entanglements. Their sound is like coughing mixed with phlegm. They can read heroic poetry, but it still comes out husky: their inner wounds overpower even the fiercest, most tiger-like text. Their heads are gentle snakes. Their closest real-world relatives are those victims of violence interviewed on talk-show stages, speaking between sobs.
Then we have the Master of Ceremony readers. Any poem in their hands is delivered as though addressing a gala audience: “Distinguished ladies and gentlemen… kindly…” They are haunted by microphones, camera lights, event backdrops, and audiences in suits or batik. At district or municipal contests, they might win—especially if the judging panel includes one government officer, one journalist, and one event organizer. Their heads resemble the elegant profile of the Garut ram performing its silat dance. A ram is not a goat, but it is the closest kin.
The strangest type consists of the straining readers—those who sound like they are giving birth to a globe the size of a soccer ball. To this day I have no idea what animal inhabits their heads, though perhaps the question is irrelevant. People who strain like that clearly have unresolved business with something they have swallowed—knowledge, advice, or some metaphysical charm. They will never win anywhere, in any category, yet they feel themselves champions nonetheless—champions of the unseen.
And then, there are the rare, the true readers. Whether they wear glasses or not, whether they read at a desk or on the roof of a village train, whether young, elderly, flying on a Boeing or riding in a submarine, they encounter the world differently. The world presents multiple layers of reality, and reality itself positions them as one vibrating element among others. In turn, they become both a “presence” and a “representation.” Such a reader has no fixed head, body, or tail. They cannot even touch Meaning itself.
Of course, everything depends on the poem. True—but even a terrible poem, in the hands of a true reader, reveals silver-gold-jewel qualities, even if those qualities come from the reader rather than the poem. Meanwhile, in the hands of tiger-goat-ram-snake hybrids, even the greatest poems will roar, bleat, or hiss in unpleasant ways.
(Those of you who just won the provincial FLS2N competition—into which species would you place yourselves? And those who served as judges—when exactly will your honorarium arrive in your bank accounts? Long wait, isn’t it?) []
