Who are you,
My country?
Many years have I
breathed of your air
Drank of your waters
Trod on your bones
Mingled with your flesh
And yet
The names of your celebrities are
(Who even are they?)
Wind in my ears
Your latest leaders are
(now that we are in between elections)
faceless, forgotten
Your hawker stall customs are
(Kopi-C, siew dai, mee siam mai hum)
alien to me
The clockworks of your apparatus are
(CPF, COE, HDB)
But hungry ghosts
By right of blood and soil
I suppose
I am part of the SingLit scene
For all my works and all my accolades
Few in the scene hail me as a fellow
Why, then, should I
Return the gesture?
In the annual parade of
endless debut authors
I see
Names unknown, names never to be known
I submit my books as law demands
(Two paperbacks, one ePub)
To moulder forever
in some forgotten aisle and file
You celebrate your
Twin cinema and your
Zoetrope and your
Pantun and syair
I listen to Li Bai and the Iliad
Seek Shakespeare and the sagas
Where shall I place
My finger upon this fissure?
Stood have I on East Coast’s sands
Espada in one hand and daga in another
In the Central Library have I found
The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome
Riding the MRT I read tales of men
Riding dragons and dragon-ships
I have worn your No. 4
And cradled to my breast American iron
On 9 August I remember
A sun falling on the land of the rising sun
At my void deck have I practiced arts
Antique in the days of Great Ming
At your churches and temples have I prayed
And to me came the all-knowing owl and the far-seeing corvids
Our tongue descends from
The land of the Angles
To this legacy I add
The lays of westerly lands
Yours you bury with
Eastern grammar and Outland words
I hear you
I will not speak like you
You hear me
You do not know me
It is the only way it can be so
For
Are you not my country?
And am I not your son?
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