TEMASEK

By Edwin Thumboo

Deprived of you, history and sense
Turn quicksilver. In my grieving side
Grammars of living break their tense,
Diminish tact, impatience, pride,
Other contraries of soft power
That override or humble fact, debate,
The sea's recession or the faded flower.
I wonder if, again, old fashioned Fate,
Jealously ruminates in secret, rides
Us creatures who celebrate or rue.
I am bare. Unknowing, the world derides
My acts, my silences...deprived of you.
 

Edwin Thumboo

This week's Montage Poetry is dedicated to a sample of poems read at the Singapore Writer's Festival (SWF) 2009

ULYSSES by the MERLION

By Edwin Thumboo (for Maurice Baker)

I have sailed many waters,
Skirted islands of fire,
Contended with Circe
Who loved the squeal of pigs;
Passed Scylla and Charybdis
To seven years with Calypso,
Heaved in battle against the gods.
Beneath it all
I kept faith with Ithaca, travelled,
Travelled and travelled,
Suffering much, enjoying a little;
Met strange people singing
New myths; made myths myself.
But this lion of the sea
Salt-maned, scaly, wondrous of tail,
Touched with power, insistent
On this brief promontory...
Puzzles.
Nothing, nothing in my days
Foreshadowed this
Half-beast, half-fish,
This powerful creature of land and sea.
Peoples settled here,
Brought to this island
The bounty of these seas,
Built towers topless as Ilium's.
They make, they serve,

They buy, they sell.

Despite unequal ways,
Together they mutate,
Explore the edges of harmony,

Search for a centre;
Have changed their gods,
Kept some memory of their race
In prayer, laughter, the way
Their women dress and greet.
They hold the bright, the beautiful,
Good ancestral dreams
Within new visions,
So shining, urgent,
Full of what is now.
Perhaps having dealt in things,
Surfeited on them,
Their spirits yearn again for images,
Adding to the dragon, phoenix,
Garuda, naga those horses of the sun,
This lion of the sea,
This image of themselves.

"Edwin Thumboo cemented the iconic status of the Merlion as a personification of Singapore with his poem Ulysses by the Merlion in 1979. Due to Thumboo's status as Singapore's unofficial poet laureate and the nationalistic mythmaking qualities of his poetry, future generations of Singaporean poets have struggled with the symbol of the Merlion, frequently taking an ironical, critical, or even hostile stand - and pointing out its artificiality and the refusal of ordinary Singaporeans to accept a tourist attraction as their national icon. The poem "attracted considerable attention among subsequent poets, who have all felt obliged to write their own Merlion (or anti-Merlion) poems, illustrating their anxiety of influence, as well as the continuing local fascination with the dialectic between a public and a private role for poets, which Thumboo (as Yeats before him, in the Irish context) has wanted to sustain as a fruitful rather than a tense relation between the personal and the public." (Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

A Sprinkler

By Ronny Someck (For Liora and Shirli)

Love bursts out in thin streams
From the pores of the sprinkler.
We too are like the earth's cheek
Thirsty for the kiss of water. (Translated to English from Hebrew by Robert Manaster & Hana Inbar)

Mr Aushwitz

By Ronny Someck

It's difficult to melt away from memory the chunk of blue ice that had frozen in his eyes,
The numbers tattooed on his arms
And the belt he used to whip the woman who'd been there with him
And is now keeping silent on the balcony.
"A pity," his voice used to cut, "That Hitler didn't work extra hours."
And the cacti in pots were sticking out like the barbed fences
Of the camp he'd fled from.
Foam was spilling from the well of his poisonous mouth,
And he used to wipe it with the flag hanging there from one Independence Day to
the next.
"Mr. Aushwitz," we shouted the time they took him away to the asylum,
And he managed to put his hand into a pocket and peel off
from the candies he threw at us.

Ronny Someck was born in Baghdad in 1951 and came to Israel as a young child. He studied Hebrew literature and philosophy at Tel Aviv University and drawing at the Avni Academy of Art. He has worked with street gangs, and currently teaches literature and leads creative writing workshops. He has published 10 volumes of poetry and his work has been translated into 39 languages. (Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Memory

By Edwin Thumboo

What shall I do when the eyes remember
Your absence. Nothing, not even a vague wisp
To feed those hungers I cannot name. Windows
open; the sanctified air has no music no incense
no grief no shadows no sacred fragments
for a last song. .

Except memory which decrees your image,
that neither time nor distance over-arch, or claim.
For sunlight still submits to the glory of your hair.
And that drop of rain cooling your hot breath,
stays spiced and inspired at the tip of your nose,
unwilling to drop.
Night remains cathedral, your roof of stars;
The Milky Way, dim white shadow of a gown,
Whose soft swish is the wings of gathered angels.
And so you cross empty room and universe to dream
with Olwen and Sita and Consort Fu, waiting
to be called again.
So these words with you behind. A pure rapture,
because I chose our friends and conversation,
have them sit. You pick meals to share, tame hands,
place forgotten photos between pages of books.
Then I say farewell, without gift or regret,
knowing eyes remember. (August 2005)