TENGGARA /october 1968
Dept. of English/ Univ. of Malaya
Kuala Luampur/ Malaysia.
singapore's three poets:
lee tsu pheng -- chandran nair
& yeo bock cheng
Lee Tzu Pheng
STIIL-LIFE
Going down between the flame trees
evening is again a pale sky and the haze lifting;
The goats laugh softly in the next field,
mingling in a murmur of sleepy children
vague as smoke-smell from cooking fires
in the nearby houses.
On the wooden top-step
beyond the parting in the hedge,
an old woman nods over a sleeping child
half-hidden, encircled.
She is there every evening, you say,
and every evening here is the same scene --?
and you turn for home, wondering a little.
Coming back under the flame trees,
see the open seed-pods which the wind lifts easily,
no longer anxious for the rain or sun,
their life work done.
ORPHANS
being woman
what would I want
with mind-children
these hands
only can hold
formed flesh
words
against my mouth
dry silent
haemorrhage
elsewhere
within
my race
has no time
for uncertainties
my people know
their daughter
and I know
with mind-children
what could I want
being woman
CHANDRAN NAIR
HINDU CREMATION
this was the picture
the pot is broken
the thread of life runs out,
flames leap the sandlewood pyre
and your body laid without ceremony
burns without feeling the heart afire,
only the living flames eat flesh
and only the living love that bodies
the flames devours without waste.
and your earthly reward --
a coconut broken in haste,
savagely, by one who couldn't care
you died too soon,
left the fabric too bare
for us to trace you in our lives.
your son who bore the pot does not cry,
he knows it natural to die,
but your wife who has known no loneliness
in a dream she cries,
later to me she says without tears,
"he is no more, who to me was all
and having promised never to leave
has gone and left me broken like a doll
in a child's hand."
and again the pause, the pain --
"we see death each day and die in turn
some are buried by priests, others burn
this we know:
but pretend death far away
beyond the making of love and children."
this is another lesson I must learn.
YEO BOCK CHENG
MOLACA MOSAIC
History hides behind yours doors
Of teak and peeling lacquer
Ashamed of its sterility,
Your grandchildren too are
Old and scared.
They fear modernity,
The thrust of
Hotels and banks between
Church and home,
The loss of painted carts
Their seats of dreams and
Procrastination.
It is getting late,
Perhaps too late, for you
The sliver krissed jets
Pass you by.
You only feel the diesel throb of
Distant trains
The alluvium of the river
Has been mucked and muddied by time,
Soon it will claim its due and
You will be remembered only by
Old men in coffee-shops;
themselves
A part of silted history.
OF DRAGONS AND LIONS
The towkay squat and rippled down
In August folds of flesh,
Proud in striped pajama pants:
A generator of money; a breeder of sons.
Recalling a peasant who
Junked his China to Singapore
Mated the dragon and the lion to be
A feudal lord on freeman's land.
The lines on his palm weaved success
And he was humble and prayed:
"Oh, Laughing Buddha, deity of plenty!
Your gifts -- ten thousand tens of rubber trees,
Fruitful wives and virile loins -- overhelm.
But grant me more: more land, more filial sons
And joss-sticks will I burn for you."
His earthy empire streched and rolled --
Tree upon tree; a sheet of money.
The fruits of labour and visions of powe.
He wanted more, but a line on his palm
Ran out. He died.
It was time he died.
His filial heirs -- fat without years,
Cabaret lovers of lap-sitters,
With ready coffin, hearse and tear
Thought his dead was more than overdue.
He was not to know
The slide and rule division of his land;
For now he was cremated dust --
Richly urned; standing in the corner of
Some darkened room in a mansion once his :
Dust gathering dust
Forgotten .
---
LEE TZU PHENG -- CHANDRAN NAIR and
YEO BOCK CHENG are graduates from the Univwersity of
Singapore . (TENGGARA'S CONTRIBUTORS)
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