Singapore 1941/2
1 - They Return
(for Ban & Helen)
Images,
Whose tribe - born of stone and gossamer, commanding acts
Of birth, life, and death; high cowardice to mute bravery;
Saints to sinners - rise in twilight, return in quiescent days.
At times unexpectedly, usually when silence shakes its fist.
Riding deep, they are swift horsemen against whom memory
Can't lock its gates; nor brute will disband, or time delude.
Moments of myrrh and incense, epiphany and bleeding cross:
All these our senses take; all these our senses will return.
And others, less of spirit, more of sad, hostile worlds
Re-staged precisely: bursting shells; reprise burning city;
Bedraggled mid-Feb bungalow in Sarkis Road, its fridge
Smelly as multi-coloured mould fed on abandoned food.
You too, have histories,
Which grip and straddle memory; which unfurls at times.
Like mine today, half a century old, still echo and uncurl
Around our island's heart, as she lay lit and dreaming
Of the Magi that December night; the price of pork, mutton, rice;
Of Japanese stalking town and village in Kwangtung.
That peace in our time that failed. Europe-in-conflict,
Hitlerised, seemed far away. Gradually murmurs of war
Pushed precaution into doubtful strategy; supplications
To Our Father who art in Heaven. Papa still strolled with
Esther in his arms, enjoying fireflies in the Garden. As
Always, near Christmas, Mandai stars were out in numbers,
Some falling on shifting yam leaves, free radicals, mercurial
Dewdrops, waiting to warm their glitter in our rising sun.
Lion City, you had claws:
88,000 British, Indian, Australian and us local Asians;
15-inch guns facing out to sea; 60 million sterling sunk
Into your bowels; 15 years of labour. White man's burden;
Impregnable eastern bastion, fortified against blood-red
Afternoon; a hen crowed in Minto Road auguries.
Or so they thought, forgetting
Empires wax and wane,
Till torpedo-bomb-blast, till oil tanks died by fire,
Till night moulted in flames searing across the sky
Behind my favourite hill. Seventeen planes. Moths
Curving in from December's monsoon north,
As beaching troops at Tumpat fanned quickly inland.
I suppose you'll shove the little men off! Percival
Was told. Instead they came, they saw, they stayed.
I remember passing ruptured oil tanks, billow-black,
Before Bukit Panjang, when driving to Chinatown.
Along South Bridge Road, I counted gaps where houses
Collapsed abruptly, on one-room families of ten or twelve.
In Upper Nanking Street I felt no loss, no tragedy .
Papa shook his head; Mama wept, thinking of family close
To Kallang Gasworks. Then to Beach Road's famous
Indian Muslim lunch, soda-fountain sarsi, ice bandung,
Before heading for the Padang. We saw volunteers muster;
The tiffin crowd at Raffles; up-country cars unloading
White evacuees, with an amah here, a head boy there.
Imperial reminders: Supreme Court, Municipality, SCC,
The Cenotaph. Even more so with a broken Zero on display:
Fuselage, one wing, the tail assembly, engine, bent prop,
Bloody parachute and flying goggles. All far bigger than
Models cousin Vincent made. I touched the rising sun, cool
Brilliant red, approvingly. Got smacked, and shushed.
Day and night moved fast. Often away at the MAS, Papa
Surrendered his shot-gun, then got the air-raid shelter built.
The damp earth smelt of toads, clogging my nose. Stocked
Up food, including our favourite things, while windows got
Darkened. Petrol getting scarce, yet the good life went on.
But within weeks
They crossed the Straits, crossed farm and hill;
Their planes flew free as masters of our sky.
The powers that be had clearly lost their will:
They could not steady look us in the eye.
The fall of Singapore:
Facts and figures; imperial ambitions; much
Praise and blame; the suffering and loss to families;
How, blowing pipes, the brave retreat to fight again,
Forgetting that death has far less glory in defeat.
Agnus Dei, Qui Tollis Peccata Mundi, Miserere Nobis.
The diggers at Gemas, far from stubborn quarrelling
Commanders, while Tsuji-homework brought crack Jap
Soldiers down through jungle thought impossible. Chinese
Irregulars in final black, died loving their two countries;
And Lt Adnan, who kept faith with his warrior's blood.
These and more, we shall remember.
Knowing war is cruel we structure peace,
Forgiveness. They came one quiet December,
Unknowingly bringing Asia's freedom, and release.
II - Father – 4
They return, those walks before the sun grew hot
Along broken, morose roads skirting the Japanese Camp,
Passing rusty bren gun carriers retreating Brits forgot.
Day 3-9-5 into the war you counted as monsoon damp
Besieged your joints, playing havoc subverting bones.
You grimaced; I thought of molars left at dentist Fones.
We heard mutters, increasingly; a hatred of the times.
How you wrestled Nippon-go far into the night,
Moving up from guttural roots, nursery rhymes…
To teach to feed us. Precarious job. Kept despite
The hard, deep-gripping consonants that maimed
An English-crusted tongue unwilling to be tamed.
Much else disturbed the peace, brutalised your pride.
Yet you coped; self-redeemed. Only a fire in your eye
Revealed nerves sharply pinched during the daily ride
To school on uncle's dubious Raleigh. Eddie, never cry
You said, so softly that I feared some terrible thing,
Without shape or name, had left in you its bitter sting.
Know only that the unleavened lesson of your pain,
So carefully unspoken, now decodes, makes sense.
Surely, great is memory which yet renews again
That little light hidden in the darkness of offence.
In times like these, Ah Tiah, you quiet ways
Still the turbulence of odd, dyspeptic days.
Edwin Thumboo
Dec 26-7-8/2001
