After Zagajewski’s ‘To Go to Lvóv’

 

To go to S’pore. Which station

for S’pore, if not in a dream, at dusk, when rain

glistens on chrome. When Mass Rapid

Trains and Light Rail Trains are borne

to all corners. To leave in a hurry for S’pore,

night and day, in August or in May, but early,

but only if S’pore exists, if it is to be

found within the bounds

of this island and not just

in the colour of my passport, of my smart card;

if the smell of raintrees after thunderstorm,

of angsana, of frangipani, still lingers

like fresh smoke; if the canals brim

and grumble like epithets in Hokkien, vanish

beneath ground. To pack up and go, to leave

and never look back, at 5 p.m. to cease

like shop windows, while beneath the whirl

of fans in coffee shops, geckos chatter

their politics. But the office tower rises, straight

as the law, and everyone standing

in its shadow, and a mop and bucket leaning

on window glass, and our dream which hadn’t

come yet, only concrete, and litter-bins and the

rainbow pulse of new pubs set to music, the low

bass tremble of bumboats, rocking.

Always too much of S’pore, no one

could fathom the depths of its neighbourhoods,

walk the inside trails between each block and hear

the creak and hiss of each brick speaking, scalded

by sun, at night the city’s muteness, the dead

stillness in Shenton Way unlike that of temples

where monks keep silence full of unseen rivers.

In Liang Seah street history spilled

in unlit stairwells and on window louvres

swinging and shutting by themselves, in china

blue ceramic tiles, in flour, in the smell of eggs,

the form of feathers plastering the walls, in green

muck collecting in rusty pipes, fronds growing

where laundry once sprouted and the streets

played percussion and the air singed, the procession

of the devout sang like kings of the world

toward the temple gates. People in such frantic joy

they didn’t want to stay indoors. So much life

it burst and flooded every street, it cracked the sky in

thunder and fireworks, the new year lived over

and over. My granny as she stood at the window

calling for my father, dinner ready and

steaming in the evening light and neighbours

shouting from windows, watching out for

trouble and the next meal and nothing tentative

as hope. An uncle slaved himself blind

reading by candlelight, while my father was out

catching fireflies. The health inspector came

and my grandfather bought him a drink

and covered the cockroaches with his sole, and

got away with it. Even then

there was too much of S’pore, it overflowed

each drain, came down as rain, so much and yet

none; what was there spawned, grew, cut

into shape not without love and now the green

June springs from every square, verdant wigs

pulled over everything. Weeds, attap, kampong

and five-foot way fell away as the towers rose,

pushing out above the temples, people shuffled on,

handbags and wallets full of tomorrow,

and every estate growing into each other,

and everyone a leaseholder, and now in a hurry

to just go, and somewhere to come and go from,

S’pore tugged every which way,

S’pore clutched in the small palm of the sea,

becoming and flowing in like tears, tides, currents,

rivers run beneath the surface everywhere