Singapore

               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, Hokkien, 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.)

Intervention: Theses on the Philosophy of Poetry

The coincidence of the changing of [human] circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionizing practice.

                -- Karl Marx, "Theses On Feuerbach"

As flowers turn toward the sun, by dint of a secret heliotropism the past strives to turn toward that sun which is rising in the sky of history.  A historical materialist must be aware of this most inconspicuous of all transformations.

                -- Walter Benjamin, “Theses On the Philosophy of History”

It must change.

                -- Wallace Stevens, "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction"

                I.

Funny, wouldn’t you say?

When the poet thus addresses

those he deems his good readers.

“What’s this?  He’s jumped the poem!”

Bit like fleeing the cops.

                II.

Some may wonder, “Why not prose?

Can we hear the poem?

And the empty space…

picture in the margin, at least –

that would make it worthwhile.”

Often ask myself such questions.

                III.

Is it verse or its specter,

this regularity?

Not a versified prose,

anyway – as Frost called it

(“free verse,” as it’s known).

                IV.

Keep it close to song.

That’s my motto…let you decide.

                V.

Where has poetry gone?

Truthfully, pop music killed it.

Songs are better than poems…it's

been true since '62 –

year of Dylan’s first songs.

Up to us to get it back –

poetry, that is.

Poets, look to song!

Poets, look to popular song!

                VI.

Now, though, song has died too.

Nothing out there but rehashings –

save the terminal limits

we’ve seen (the Clash and rap).

Ah, the dustbin of pop –

all that crap on MTV.

That’s where we come in.

Melody must rest.

Caretakers of language, unite!

                VII.

Bad academy art.

Poetry's been left to languish,

locked up in the arcades or

museums that are called 

schools.  Once, Dylan compared

colleges to old age homes –

said more people die

where the paid scribes thrive,

unread journals pile up in stacks,

jargons, gurus amass,

arm and then unarm their can(n)ons

under grant from big business…

(Of course, it’s Art he meant –

kids die too, to be sure.)

                VIII.

“Higher learning.”  It is doomed

in its current form.

Verse can play a part.

Chase the classics out of their stacks,

words will follow in droves.

                 IX.

“Free verse” was an aberration…

intermediate framework

that made sense only once.

Sandpit.  Modernist trap.

Contrary to Harold Bloom,

Ashbery writes prose,

great though he may be -

counts to twenty, presses return…

                X.

What is poetry, then?

It's a dream of what is spoken

(double meaning's intended) -

of what our words may dream,

and of what they could speak

in a slightly altered state…

slightly bigger air,

somewhat smoother plane,

tongue, etc.  It's a dream,

that's to say, of our prose.

(Prose is simply speech remembered…

speech's memory, that is - 

set down for reference.)

                XI.

This much, maybe, we've known.

Verse: a lapse or lisp of prose.

How does it relate,

on the other hand,

to that other affect of speech,

worded melody?  Song?

                XII.

Poem and prose or poem and song?  Which?

                XIII.

Can't imagine a people

without the gift of song.

This is possible, though -

fancying a poem-less world.

Song itself might do,

melody suffice. 

Thus, it's clear what's prior to what.

                XIV.

Song.  It knows what it is -

knows, in short, of where it falls off

from the tasks of the spoken,

from what we know as prose.

Verse is never so sure.

When it seeks itself in prose,

does it find itself 

or a mirrored prose

therein?  That is, "versified prose"?

Does it wake up to find 

it's the butterfly that's dreaming,

that it's only the spoken

reciting its conceits,

adding nothing to them, 

not the merest difference?

So it turns to song,

sets its pace by it,

studies where its difference lies.

                XV.

That's the practice of verse.

Therein lies our truer practice.

The material spoken

becomes the stuff of song.

Poetry then suggests,

on the basis of those shifts

language undergoes 

via melody,

other speeches that have been made

possible or discerned

under music's spell or aspect.

Song is speech as it sings out,

but poetry is speech

thinking back on the time

during which it wasn't speech,

wasn't only speech…

during which it sang.

This is where our practice resides.

                XVI.

Stevens said, It must change.

Prose is what he meant at bottom.

Poetry doesn't so much

change prose as monitor

points at which it might change.

What he meant is not that we

seek to transform speech,

but that we unveil 

the mutations buried in speech.

Think of what this involves:

both forthcoming transformations

and all those that have gone past…

precisely why we read.

Poets excavate nodal

points of past change and so learn

where and how to glimpse,

track the Nodal Now.

                XVII.

Verse is a material art,

a material thought.

This is a tautology, though;

art's material - all art.

It's rather thought on art

that we'd make our concern.

                XVIII.

Art is always in advance,

both of thought on art

and of art's own thought.

Art sets an example for thought,

much as song sets the pace

for the poets in their strivings

after change and its network.

                XIX.

An intermediate 

form is poetry, then -

interfusing art and thought,

speech and spoken change,

 spoken words and song.

Still, it's art - most centrally, art.

                XX.

What's material thought?

Thought that deals with transformation -

metaphor, in specific.

Produces it, in fact.

Simply studying it

fails, though study is involved.

Nothing's harder, though,

than producing change.

Few philosophers ever do.

                XXI.

Marx and Nietzsche and Freud.

Why do we return to these three

(or their metaphors, rather)?

What changes, metaphors

did they place in effect?

Summarized respectively:

We are not of Man.

We are not of God.

We do not assume what we speak.

                XXII.

Let's examine them, though.

God is now a thing of science.

Who knows?  Maybe they'll find Him.

You think our metaphors

couldn't rally Him back?

Very well could be the next.

I would be surprised.

What's a metaphor, 

anyway, if not a surprise?

                XXIII.

Then the one about Man.

"Man is that which calls itself such."

Seems to pretty much sum up

the ballyhoo on Man.

Say we've chased him away.

Likely he'll return

in this guise or that.

Often he pops up in the press

or in neighborly speech.

Never as a metaphor, though.

Quite impossible nowadays,

that old conceited oaf.

                XXIV.

God and Man seem quite plain -

or the questions that they raise.

Still, we're left with speech

and of what of it

we with right consider our own.

                XXV.

No one cares about Man,

mopes of God or of God's death now.

Granted, people may think they

are after these old tropes.

Language has no concern

either for them or against.

That's the poet's job - 

knowing where the real

faiths of language are to be found.

                XXVI.

What comes out of the mouth?

99% convention.

Do we mean the same thing when

we speak of God or Man

as they did in the days 

ere the earth began to turn

circles in its year's

course around the sun?

No.  They're simply trinkets and tropes.

                XXVII.

Yes.  But what of the third - 

that concerning what is spoken?

We're still under its aspect.

Of what and how we speak –

that's the crux of the poem…

and of who assumes that speech.

Find your matters and

find your metaphors

there in the conundrums of speech.

                XXVIII.

What I said up above

seems to give to verse a back seat.

Opposite's true, however.

For what is poetry

if it isn't the true 

poiesis of this world?

Making's impetus?

That through which all change

first obtains - all genuine change?

                XXIX.

Proper poetry, though - 

verse denominated as such - 

sometimes reigns through its absence,

and now is such a time.

From it we would emerge.

                *    *    *

Verse is that which documents

human poetry,

humans under change,

underneath the aspect of change.

Continuation:  Reflections On Benjamin’s “Theses”

Emphatically may it be said of the Poet, as Shakespeare hath said of man, “that he looks before and after.”

                    -- Wordsworth, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”

Might verse not best confuse itself with fate?

                    -- Marianne Moore, “Saint Valentine”

                I.

Walter Benjamin said,

“Only for redeemed mankind do

yesterday and its moments

become, in each and each,

fully citable.  That’s

what is meant by Judgment Day.”

Our concerns have changed.

Now we don’t believe 

that we could account for it all,

cite what’s all rushed on by.

Doubt’s been cast upon redemption.

Now our plans are more modest;

they don’t redeem mankind.

Humans don’t make an “All”

via which they’d be redeemed,

and the future’s not –

is not, that’s to say.

Towards it, though, the present is aimed.

Nothing’s ever redeemed.

Dylan’s “Nothing Was Delivered,”

in its rollicking 6/8,

can sum it up for us.

That song blithely forgets

what was ever unrecalled –

and it rolls along 

in a major key.

Gabriel is out of a job.

                II.

Could be Benjamin’s right.

Take his figure of the angel

staring back on the garbage

accumulating in

piles of junk hurling out

from a storm in Paradise.

Fearing for his wings,

out in front he flies –

with his back, though, turned to the goal

(Judgment Day or the like),

looking back in speechless horror

on the offal of progress,

thus heading toward the goal

though unable to know

that indeed he’s heading there.

Could be that this trope

sums up where we are.

Certainly it seems to suggest

the position at which

poets must regain their footing.

When the poet attempts to

reverse his backward gaze,

all he sees is the dark

shadow of the angel’s form,

with an outlined cap

added to the mound –

silhouetted half of himself.

(If he’s waving a flag – 

national, or else linguistic –

does he laugh at the joker

atop that Everest?)

Thus, the goal is obscured

though the origin is clear –

all too clear, in fact.

Blinded either by

shadows at the rear or by light

streaming out from the dump –

call it Paradise or Progress,

Eden, Capital maybe,

or simply History…

                III.

Jetztzeit. That’s the term

Benjamin devised 

signaling a hiccup in time

or a pause or a gasp

when all freezes in a standstill.

“Now-time” – which I’ve adapted

and called the Nodal Now.

I’ve identified it

as the poet’s chief concern.

(Benjamin did not 

call it metaphor –

that’s from the Lacanian Freud…

and from Stevens, as well.

Merely spoke of transformations.)

It’s the “citable moment”

in which the past lights up

strong at one of its nodes,

only for an instant’s span…

not that past itself,

but the present time

in its “tiger’s leap” out across

the continuum’s sprawl.

Thus does Robespierre look back to

Rome, etc., cutting

a swath through history’s

self-complacent conceits,

that serve force (both brute and mute),

those in its employ, 

those who guard the dump,

those who’d simply keep it a dump…

                IV.

Further, Benjamin says,

“In each age attempts are made to

wrest tradition away from

the deadly grip of scribes

who would serve those who rule” – 

meaning those who rule with force.

Art must be reclaimed 

from the powerful

clutch of institutional wealth.

This will only transpire

through a hard-won poiesis.

Thus, we look to the poets

and seek, through a renewed 

interest in an art

out of practice these long years – 

high upon the dump

(low as well perhaps) –

intimations, sparks of the Now.

        * * *

Origin is the goal.

Revelation’s out of Eden –

not, though, out of an Eden

as if once and for all.

 Things begin and begin.

Kraus’ famous maxim means,

“Eden meets its end

at the nodes of IS –

at the Nodal Now, 

at the Now.”

1  -  1  -  -  1

1  -  1  -  1  -  1  -

1  -  1  -  -  1  -

-  1  -  1  -  1

1  -  1  -  -  1

1  -  1  -  1  -  1

1  -  1  -  1

1  -  1  -  1

1  -  1  -  1  -  -  1

        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 Nana’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 Nana’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 Nana’s clovered dreams

        on hills of Ringamore.

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