And I would've told you
about the truck.
Candy, melons and dragonbeard.
               But the truck has circled the city
     twice and returned with armoured men.
And I would've told you
               about the forest.
The casuarinas flecked with starlight.
                             But the stars are burning
and the forest has chipped its flint.
And I would've told you about
    the miracle at the back of the mama shop,
         when my sister brought life into
               a world that had forgotten
                   about living, and my mother found
                       two Straits pennies at the foot
               of the flower pot and the lilies were no longer   
          pressed into the ground,
                    no one had walked there for years
                 and the lady with feather boas
                       and a sailor's dream was back
                                 doing small-town numbers
                         at midnight. Someone once said,
                      if you looked long enough at the stars,
               you'd be looking into eternity.
            And I asked, in this eternity
        of yours, could my father be any more alive?
  What does it mean to live forever  
                      once we've cast our lots?
                            In another eternity,
                                    you're on the roof,
                           tending to your tapioca plant.
                    The theatre closes a little later now.
               The television talks less of the ships
                         than of weather. Sometimes,
                    on the navy report,
              there is a crackle and pop
        of spring—static on the radio and it just      
   keeps going. And sometimes, I like to think
it's you, messing with the transmission.
                      How sad it would be to live forever.
                When everything is just too early
                      too late, and our existence
                           is a fulcrum of white noise.