Singapore

I met a man atop the tallest peak of a tiny Pacific Island
I stared into his pitiless eyes, and he sneered, resentful
Behind lenses that immerse him in reality, artificial
And labels that brand him with the names and the faces
Of a country he’s never desired
As I laid wailing and failing and crying and dying
He pressed a red-hot iron into the side of my neck
And all the while, he’s mumbling
Mumbling sounds of death from the ramparts
Sounds that will poison the woods of a whole other continent:
For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink, for they are worthy.

His cloud looms over me. Whitman says
Like the ugly face of some beautiful soul
And now that I’ve returned, crossed that great mass of water
It poisons everything I thought was good
I want that silvery city back, and those flickering green lights
When the bounds of my longing stretched a continent, not a world
What rough inheritance, what cruel timing
To have tasted the fruit of Armistice and be plunged back into war
You chose to leave, and for that crime
You can never go home again.

Thirteen years. What time has passed.
The men of my lineage, too, have passed.
All this time, the rest have grown older and older
And I was there for none of it
Because across this ocean, on distant shores
Alberta wailed her old ache
And on the precipice of, too, her tallest peak
Her snow, at once, called ancient reverie
And severed the long wire that spans back east
For joy and possibility? The audacity of belief?
I am everything and nothing.

I spent the past three years tracing liberty’s harbour
And I found a world of love, hope, and glory
And yet my visage, constructed, falters, abducted
In the face of old, old, memories
All these things I remember—like the stations of metro
With the light dot matrix that flickers for the doors
And the seats that hold my mother and me
Beneath this island with tropical shores
And my first favourite place on Earth
Conscious remembrance of luminous presence
Of fishing in gutters and eastern resorts
Of air-conditioned malls with small food courts
Those hot and heavy monsoon-swept rains
drench old colonial buildings
and hold an entire world I’ve worked hard to shed
Twenty-one years. What time has passed.
Wishes of people that love me
I can’t believe any of it.

What would it profit me to gain the world, but lose my soul?
I stand awed beneath a show of unconditional love
I left them here, dangling, and they hold me nevertheless
The same way they held me—
I spent years resentful, pulling up the walls
That country’s not mine, it never was
I demeaned it for the brand in the side of my neck
And built a whole other world
Yet they love me, still.
Tonight, it’s as if I can stretch my arms right across this ocean
And far across it, on the opposite bank of the Pacific
there’s a continent, and a group of people on it, that gave me everything I am and more.

Beneath golden monuments to something and nothing
In a bay farthest from liberty, and lights that look, bluffing
I saw the man on the mount in a sky so beautiful
A bird diving from the summit, abseiling, inscrutable
His brand remains in my neck, but I wail no-more
Whitman says I contain multitudes—and therefore:
This world ain’t mine, it’s theirs to hold
And for some ancient reason, I’m paroled, extolled.

Guilt-free, Canada calls me home once more
For liberty, possibility—goodnight, Singapore.