TENGGARA / Oct.1968
Dept. of English/ Univ. of Malaya
Kuala Lumpur/ Malaysia
Mohamad Haji Salleh
is a graduate student at the University of Malaya.
Born in Perak, he began writing poetry, both in
English and in the Malay, while training to be a
teacher. Later he majored in English literature
at the University of Singapore. TENGGARA
the ice-cream boys
you find them at stations
crying their wares
as frequent as their short breaths
could release the shrill words,
for the stops were brief
and the train long
and not everybody eats their ice-creams.
after five minutes, they grew
a little tired and yawned
in the hot afternoon sun.
there were too many of them
and the passengers prefer
the more expensive soft drinks.
the sale was bad.
yet they still walked up and down
by the side of the hot train,
hoping and disengaging themselves
from hope, from time to time.
they have learnt that
profits are accidental,
as unpersuadable as people's tastes.
in their thin muddy legs,
in their eyes and faces
their wore poverty
like their ragged unclean shirts.
how many sticks can i buy
to quench the drought
in their eyes?
breaking
today, something broke in me,
some soft essential humanity
fell apart at the line of faith.
because i hung my life
on a thread of beliefs,
because beliefs are only hopes,
padded with flattery,
a way of denying the shadow,
and because i hitched too much faith,
the heavy night snapped the line.
now, i feel grains bruising my brain
as i turn my mind to think
sans in my spinal cord
grinds against my soul.
yet, through the break,
i see a new actuality,
a tauter rope to re-hang a future
and other beliefs on,
knowing well that beliefs are a flattery,
and they are the hopes we live by.
and as i turn on my hurt
i see how frail the hinges of change are,
how complete yet empty hopes are.
in me i feel something breaking and bleeding
which i cannot repair
and the consolation is not in the despair
to abandon is to move on,
to forget is to be aware
of this small sunlit pool of the present.
and it is in sunning
one is not reminded
of the pain in the night.
the city is my home
the city is my home
i don't have another,
i have never known another.
these buildings re my walls
the street my floor
and the people my family.
but the city is an unkind home,
pushing me into myself
an a crowd i cannot talk with.
my people are too preoccupied
with their own selves.
they have not learnt to care,
nor look into another's eyes
and find him there.
they do not love.
only the desolate are kind
because they have dared
themselves to feel.
in the walled crowded city.
but if my people do not learn to love
they shall die from their own estrangement
and the buildings will crumble
and the streets will crack in the sun.
this city is my home
these people my people.
p. 44- 46 TENGGARA 6/ 1968
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