“Merlign” (from City of Rain)

“Merlign” (from City of Rain)

Even though there are more
websites on you than verses;
even though you evoke
cameras more than pride,
postcards more than praise;
even though your titan child
is now terrorising history and
small children on Sentosa:

Still you seem to have a face poets love
to woo. There was the old gentleman,
windswept, seablown, wandering home
with a suitcase of dreams, who
treated you like a queen, hoping
to press you for secrets.

And then the lady with thick glasses,
who thought she saw Ezekiel’s cherubim,
the sign episteme of higher forces
forever barring the way to paradise.

And that young man, himself half lion,
with barbed tale raised, words coiled
like a fist. Eyes louder than silence.

Still others, perplexed
as much by your blank stare
as their maddening need to know,
burden you with the fret
of lost causes and years of waiting

Become now the need
to apostrophise what is rock,
to make it bear weight.
How we wallow in metaphors!

As a child I walked through a garden
to gawk at you, a giant too tall
for a child’s mind to wrap around.
Risking the simplest of pleasures:
a closer glance, a furtive stroke,
Reaching for scale and contact;

And now, as a man, forever measuring shadows.

No need to go on with this pretence,
these riddles and voices. This is a heap
of fashioned stone, too light to carry souls.

Rough beast, you are neither idol nor ideal.
Your heart is hollow, cold, and open
for admission, but we have nowhere else
to hide our dreams. Take what names
we have to give, and hold our secrets well.
Keep what matters and what counts;
Th e rest you can spit as spray.

Poet’s Note:
By night, The Merlion awakens during a spectacular light, sound and water show extravaganza. The ‘Rise of the Merlion’ will be staged three times a night. Colour lasers will shoot from the eyes of the Merlion and from the Musical Fountain in synchronisation with the symphony of dancing water fountains in a 15-minute show designed to be a crowd-pleaser.
– The Sentosa Homepage, circa 1888.

‘Perhaps having dealt in things, / Surfeited on them, / Their spirits yearn again for images’
– ‘Ulysses by the Merlion’, Edwin Thumboo.

‘… O feckless wanderer / remember to respect my creators.’
– ‘The Merlion to Ulysses’, Lee Tzu Pheng.

‘I still do wish it had paws.’
– ‘The Merlion’, Alfian Sa’at.

From Writing Singapore: An Historical Anthology of Singapore Literature, Angelia Poon, Philip Holden and Shirley Geok-lin Lim, eds. Singapore: NUS Press, 2009. (608-609).