IN the 1930s, the poet Amir Hamzah went to Bali, met a woman who fascinated him, and wrote: My wanderlust heart brings me to the place cursed by all the holy scriptures of the world, yet you, my heart, have your own scripture, loath to listen to those others.

Whoever would think that these lines came from Amir Hamzah? We are familiar with this poet, a Malay aristocrat, through his intense poetry about God, and through his collection of tra