…and longer ago: a late sumatra
 
sidling up the coast, crackling and harmless
for as long as the red earth stood over us.

Along the toothy shore one could stand
in water calm as glass, or sand, as this queen

of storms came calling over the open sea
with freight from as far as the world seemed then,

king's yellow, ivory-black, lapis blue.
And still nothing would match its russet hue…


[1603]

Write, Grotius: how they waited all night
in our shallows, drinking salt

as our swamps drove the Catarina to her loss,
how not one of us in our houses

turned to look, opened the windows even,
knowing our own mare liberum ¹

had changed hands for so much smoke,
so much metal. Early the next

morning we saw her towed against the wind
trailing our finest incense behind

her, a cloud. Write: how much hung in the
balance. Our water. Our air. 


[1819]

(A premonition, then,

[1942]

    of what on earth would come, again.)





[1956]

He called the house Tumasek, but of course
we came to know it by its address, Besar, ²
for it was larger than life, as he himself was;

large, also, of heart. Only years later did
we hear (too late) the echo of those cliffs
cut down to size, a rumble in his voice

that never went away, whose very ground
had been pulled from under him. It was this
he considered the greatest theft: wide water –

once visible from where he'd sit, holding
court – now beyond reach, and in its place
another port, its laden ships, their rise and fall. 


[1994]

East Meadows. The Glades. Country Park.
Eastwood Regency. D'Manor. Limau Park.

Costa del Sol. Parbury Hill. The Baycourt.
Casa Merah. Palmwoods. Stratford Court.

The Springfield. The Clearwater. Tropicana.
Urban Vista. Tanamera Crest. Tanamera.


[…]

Now everything comes from this           the new blocks
draped fluttering red           over their faux brick shade
the levelled lie of the land           even the new terminal
where the sea pours in            from over tall steel sides
 
also the school that has been built            called temasek
the field that has taken over            the swimming pool
so that not a trace exists            of even that bleached sea
of learning to swim            and through the sting, to see

in time perhaps even I           will say I come from this
singing this orphaned soil          the only tongue I know
from where the rain still gathers          when it arrives
from where the earth rises still higher          in my sleep.



1.  'The Sea is common to all, for it is so limitless that it cannot become the possession of any one.' – Hugo Grotius, Mare Liberum, 1609; after the Dutch East India Company's capture of the Portuguese carrack Santa Catarina off the coast of Tanah Merah. 

2.  David Marshall, first Chief Minister of Singapore and founder of the Workers' Party, lived at 48A, Tanah Merah Besar Road.