In memory of
my grandmother, Jean P. Haas,
1906 – 1994.
Paremswara, it was –
first to take an interest in it.
Barren, pirate-infested
before the time he came.
“Lion’s City,” it means –
though no lions then or now.
16th-century,
Europeans came –
grabbed it up with everything else.
Portuguese, and then Dutch.
Finally, Her Majesty the
Queen of England arrived – or
her representative.
Raffles – that was his name.
Day in 1822.
Now it’s a hotel.
Wouldn’t let me in.
“No admittance – T-shirts or shorts.”
Went there all by myself
back in 1997.
Five-hour flight from Taipei – an
extraordinary view,
looking down on the vast
Indochinese wilderness –
over Vietnam,
Laos, Cambodia,
down, then, heading South through Malay.
West peninsular tip.
Year-round hot and steamy weather,
stone’s throw from the Equator.
It doesn’t cool at night,
and you’re constantly parched.
Better have your water pack,
though if you forget
there are ice desserts –
best in Asia. Vendors abound.
Seven days is enough,
nine if you include Sentosa
(recreational haven –
the region’s Disneyworld –
at the southernmost end).
Got around by public bus –
clean, affordable,
take you anywhere.
Fell to sleep on one once, in fact –
on a trip to the zoo.
Crammed with kids in high school outfits.
Woke up, bus was abandoned.
The driver’d locked the door.
Feared I’d suffocate there
if he didn’t soon return.
Took a look about,
pulled a window down,
squeezed through, jumped out, walked off unseen.
Population’s a mix –
ethnic Indian, Malaysian,
and Chinese (top percentage –
two-thirds majority).
1920 or so,
government closed up its gates,
immigration stopped.
The diversity,
ethnic and linguistic as well,
is a great source of pride –
a sustained riposte to wisecracks
on the practice of caning,
the ban on chewing gum,
fines for if you don’t flush,
censoring of Hollywood…
Many languages
serve as mother tongues.
The majority of Chinese
don’t speak Mandarin, but
other Chinese languages, like
Teochow, Cantonese, Hakka –
the southern dialects.
English is the main tongue
taught in schools and used at work.
Study’s also made
of one’s “mother tongue”
(how that’s ascertained, I don’t know).
Are you puzzled like me
how they keep it all in order –
that is, all of the language
and who speaks what with whom?
That’s what English is for.
Singapore’s the only place
in the region where
when you’re speaking you
don’t fear to be misunderstood.
English, Singapore style:
Drop what’s understood in context –
subjects, articles, be-verbs,
declensions and the like.
And, for emphasis, “lah”
services for mild surprise –
ending particle
borrowed from Chinese.
British English serves as the base
(lorry rather than truck,
no one waits in line – they queue up,
live in flats, not apartments);
however, Lee Kuan Yew
(Senior Minister), for
reasons unbeknownst to me,
speaks American –
sounds like FDR,
also like my grandmother Haas
(“Nana”).
Speaking of whom…
Since she died it’s almost ten years.
Recently the idea
occurred to mark the date
of her death with a poem
telling of a strange event
that occurred one day
while in Singapore.
Second day it was, afternoon.
Drowsy, needing a nap.
Had already walked my legs off.
The colonial district
since sun-up, starting out
from the Merlion (half-
fish, half-lion…souvenir
snapshot monument
at the river’s mouth),
walking upstream then to the Quay –
older district, rebuilt
in the name of restoration,
serving Singapore’s yuppies
and foreign ex-pat kids
(import shops and the like).
Stopped and had an early beer,
dizzy from the heat –
Guinness in a can.
(Rather stupid choice in such heat.
Hadn’t had one in years.
Taiwanese drink flimsy pilsners.
Hot, unsuitable climate
for decent wine or beer –
though the reds of Bordeaux
have replaced the earlier
predilection for
cognac as the gift
to initiate the exchange
known among the Chinese
(mainland and Taiwan) as Guanxi –
“scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”
with stepped-up ritual.
Always have to refuse
gifts that come to me at school.
Boss’ policy.
Doesn’t want her staff
to be bribed or purchased away.
Happens often enough.
Paid to sit at coffee tables
in the homes of the wealthy
for twice the hourly pay…
that’s, in fact, what I do
twenty hours a week or more.
Kindergarten job
helps me keep it fresh –
teaching and my body, I mean.
Gets me off of my feet
and ensures I rise at sun-up.)
Entered into a stupor
brought on by Irish stout,
then, determined to brave
what the equatorial
sun would throw my way,
I continued on,
passed a cricket field – the “Padang” –
where colonial fools
panted through their games of cricket.
Then historical Raffles.
(The gate, as said above,
brusquely turned me away.
I considered walking back
to my hostel and
changing into slacks.
Finally decided the trip
back would end in a nap,
keeping me in bed ‘til evening.
The suggestion of Kipling
is that you socialize
there and sleep somewhere else.
Have to put your fortune up
if you wish to spend
so much as a night.
I’m afraid it’s hostels for me.)
After being rebuffed,
I admired the costly upkeep
of colonial splendor –
a humbling walk along
the imposing façade.
Then I looped around and found
a museum next
to a British fort.
On the premises lie the graves
of the fellows perhaps
who’d a few blocks off played cricket,
some inscribed with self-written,
despairing epitaphs –
homilies on the fate
risked when venturing from home,
lists of loved ones left
in one’s motherland,
children left to fend for themselves…
mid-Victorian grace
showing through the gasping syntax.
Lingering on the gravestones,
I felt a drop of rain.
Looking up, I surmised
that a shower would commence.
Happens every day,
2:00 PM or so.
Took in the museum displays…
little interest, though,
after wandering the graveyard.
Found a seat, where I pondered
colonialism
and its history from
Raffles up to Gilchrist Haas –
chased away from home
by his college debts…
makes a living peddling the word
(not the Word that was pawned
back in 19th-century Asia
with not so much success
as Christendom had hoped…
but the native patois
of the world economy –
English, that’s to say).
History’s revue
sends forth characters like myself.
Yes, our time’s a revue.
No one knows that I’m the punchline,
playing Emperor’s nephew
to his Napoleon –
Raffles, that is to say,
in whose name they turned me out
(an allusion to
Hegel – look it up:
item numbered five twenty-two,
Phänomenologie).
By the time the rain had ended,
a late lunch was in order.
I got misplaced somehow
getting off of the hill
where Fort Canning slumbers on.
Couldn’t find the road
back to yuppiedom,
so I lingered on a bit more.
Got to thinking of her –
Nana, as I’d always called her,
who had recently passed on
just shy of eighty-eight.
She had traveled the East –
1926 or so.
Famous clergyman’s
daughter – third of five.
Cruise or college – that was the choice
that you needed to make
as a well-known pastor’s daughter.
First, across the Atlantic
to tour the Continent,
then – I’m not really sure
whether she went east or west –
somehow she arrived
in Japan, southwest
then to Hong Kong, northward from there,
but was stopped on her way
(destination was the Great Wall)
due to fighting and turmoil
between the N’s and C’s
in advance of the war
and of any clarity
as to who was N
and to who was C
and just what it mattered to whom.
Wasn’t sure if she’d been
south as far as Singapore – though
on to India, could be
she would have passed that way.
Possibly had made eyes
with the English cricketers.
Days of Aw Boon Haw –
“King of Tiger Balm.”
Millionaires were made overnight.
Pacing, head to the ground,
thinking if she might have been here,
something caught my attention
down in the well-trimmed grass.
Standing proudly above
all its kindred in the bunch
was a clover – a
four-leaf clover. My
heart began to race in my chest,
and I felt I’d been led –
in a kind of visitation,
like a scene out of Wordsworth –
right to this very place.
It had been a routine
that I would look forward to.
She had found a patch,
half of them four-leafs,
in a neighbor’s corner of grass,
ten steps from the garage.
Summer afternoons we’d comb it
for the fresh growth of clovers.
I stopped when I had picked
eighty-seven, I think.
Placed them all in unread books
that I planned to read.
Sometimes they’ll turn up –
even after thirty-odd years.
Well, you’ll say ‘twas the heat.
This is what I tell myself, too.
Not so hard to find four-leafs
in any patch of grass –
in east-central PA
or near Raffles, Singapore.
But throughout that day
the idea held –
coming here had all been arranged.
So…
I wanted to write
something like a travel ballad.
Find I’ve not been successful.
The chosen meter’s wrong;
Wu Bai’s lines are too short.
All you get is bits and scraps –
just a bunch of notes.
But the notes aren’t bad.
Good experience, I suppose.
Couple evenings of work
(rather more than that, in truth, though).
I conclude with a ditty
I thought up just last night.
Shows I have no regrets.
An imaginary trip
to an unreal place
I call Ringamore.
You can let me know what you think.
(An extension of thanks
goes to those who penned the Lonely
Planet – Finley and Turner.
Helped jog my memory.
And the name (can’t be sure
how it is to be pronounced)
mentioned at the top,
Paremswara – he
was a 14th-century prince.)
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Ringamore
- for Fruitfly and Voo -
There’s a place that I know.
You can get there in your barrow.
Everyone is your fellow,
and sunsets go down slow.
We could go there today,
quiz them on the games they play.
For it’s warmer there
in the warmer air.
Let’s escape this terminal gray!
If you hear a great din
coming from a source that’s hidden,
that’s because you’ve been bidden
to reel your savings in,
buy a single-wheeled cart,
hit the trail and make your start.
Here’s the faded map
(skull-bones mark the trap).
Memorize it ere you depart!
Ringamore!
Have you journeyed there before?
Have you seen them roaming
under the gloaming
by the western shore?
They have no money
and they never ask for more.
Sought my grandma’s clovered dreams
on isles of Ringamore.
At the sound of the drum
you will know that you are welcome.
Foreign visitors seldom
are turned away, though some
never pass through the gate
as they can’t get through it straight –
can’t get through the slat,
being thick or fat.
Others come too soon or too late.
Enter when there’s a lull.
You will think it’s something final –
like a scratch on the vinyl.
There isn’t time to mull
when you hear the bell chime.
Greet the warders with a rhyme.
Answer questions asked,
offer them your flask.
Round the bend’s a ten-minute climb.
Ringamore!
Like imagined realms of yore
in which blacksmiths hammer
and jesters stammer,
damsels go before
and every apple’s
sweet like honey to the core.
Picked my grandma’s clovered dreams
in lovely Ringamore.
There the memories blur
as they color with the weather,
but you’re so much the better
so long as they endure.
Though our speeches will age,
they will decorate that page
we’ll be sure to make,
and the things we take
will adorn our grandchildren’s stage.
Under clouds as they whir
you will find a patch of clover.
Look it under and over.
Sit down and think of her.
She’s the reason I went,
why I posted there my tent,
hung inside the poem
that became my home
as the stars peered down through the vent.
Ringamore!
Yes, the beast of time will roar.
Take along in binders
gilded reminders
of what came before.
What’s been forgotten –
it will all return as lore.
Found my grandma’s clovered dreams
on hills of Ringamore.