Again Thinking

These days it is difficult to not lament the human condition.

But then it must have always been so - a distant ancestor probably stood leaning on the wall of his cave looking out over the plain lamenting the human(?) condition.

Most of our myths and legends incorporate at least one tale in which the hero has to solve riddles or answer trick questions in order to survive. Asking the wrong questions could mean death of the individual and his/her family. When persons of great responsibility wrongly answered such questions personal and national suffering ensued.

Our questions today are no less tricky - can we say he has weapons of mass destruction? For example.

When our leaders ask either the wrong questions or get the answers wrong there is also loss of life and great suffering , but today batteries of minders immediately swing into action to ensure plausible explanations and plan strategies of recuperation where the buck is subtly passed elsewhere.

I have always been drawn by the simplicity of the direct question, the straight forward answer and the immediate reward/punishment scenario. The Sphinx has been for me a symbol of the human condition, that part of ourselves which questions our most secret selves and judges without hiding behind self pity. We are all Oedipus when we confront our internal Sphinx but even when we get the answer correct it does not necessarily mean the story will end happily.

The Sphinx (after Cocteau)

I

if not the sun, then the rains wash
us into suffering, as always the gods
forget, we are mortal after all
capable of small lust, great expectation
and contempt: the pharaohs built
their monuments in sand, today we
understand their geometry
if not intent, regret the loss
of need for monuments. a sphinx
walks the twilight land smiling
as we drown in questions of our own.

II

to have met the sphinx, noted shaded eyes
coolly assess the possibilities,
is to have dreamt aloud, known again
laius succeeded and the young child
died on some mountainside. antigone
waits to be born to her fated end.
or else the sphinx reborn
taunts our growing arrogance
with one short swipe, " the life
I lent, you've almost spent".


from After the Hard Hours, This Rain
Woodrose Publication, Singapore 1975

The human mind is driven by the need to know. Even when some knowledge is useless, the fact of possessing it is often considered positive, for one never knows when it can become useful. We are forever imagining roles for ourselves and/or producing scenarios where others - friends, relatives, politicians, priests, colleagues - interact to produce living drama. We identify with actors and actresses who role play for us in films and stage drama. For the poet, the business of imagining has to be tempered by form and at times, function. What is the poem for? What does it mean to say? Why is it significant the way something is said? Of course poets do not so matter of factly ask and answer questions of this sort when writing their poems. But the craft of poetry demands that they work on successive drafts and it is not possible to avoid answers to some of these questions. The role of the poet in the context of the poem is something a reader needs to understand and maybe even identify with. Catallus will forever continue speaking as long as Lesbia continues to live. Poems start in different ways: after a happening, feelings of joy or sadness, anger at an injustice, the warm glow of love. And sometimes from imagining roles. But no question is perhaps more interesting than What If? What if one could wave a magic wand and change things? What if there was no hunger and no pain? No injustice?A long time ago from within my mind I asked

              What If

            what if there were no flowers

            and no rain, no incense to burn.

           what if today means as much as

            the night's darkness,growing.

           and the sun, what if it wakes

          in a public sea, no waves.

          what if there was no single tree

          to hang from, what if the lone flute

         played and we couldn't hear

        and the darkness never dissolved

       from our closed eyes: no form

       lines stretched, curved over people.

      what if your eyes never light up

       and the clear sky becomes mulled,

      if the smoke in the house thins

      and we still do not see: no lips

      what if I said or didn't say,

      what if you said or didn't say,

      if the palm fronds lose symmetry

      and find pieces of sky born from trees

      without flowers or incense,

     without smoke, without eyes, glowing.

     what if I said: love is dead.

from Once the Horsemen and Other Poems

University Education Press, Singapore, 1972

Flowers symbolize beauty and softness and gardens; the peace and bounty of a higher power in some religions. We, however, tend to speak of nature in the past tense these days.

Yet the enormity of what man is doing to the planet was voiced a long time ago. The book, Silent Spring, was hailed as a chilling prophecy by the concerned few when it appeared more than fifty years ago, but was little heeded by those who had the authority to act, just as with today's warnings of global warming.

For the poet and songwriter a flower is a magical construction - it stands in for love, death, resilience; and colours, scents, shapes and sizes allow a pleiad of emotions to flow into words and music. We can ask in sadness where all the flowers have gone, compare our love to a red red rose. . .

For how much longer?


tenacious

there is in this orchid tenacity,
a refusal to fade and fall.
dirty white petals framing a circle
converge upon a central simplicity,
beauty.

the stone mind rejects flowers
crushing petals in harsh grip
protecting its isolation:
mutilating flowers in a garden
re-organising the mind's blossoms,
throwing away the blooms that remind

from The Stone Mind
Once the Horsemen and Other Poems
University Education Press Singapore,1972

Sixty one years after the end of the second world war, the number of those who personally lived through or fought is diminishing to vanishing point. But memories are kept alive in museums, books and films. But such memory is selective and is sometimes contested.

New challenges have risen to confront the victors - former belligerents have become allies (and some allies after having been cold war enemies have turned out rather uneasy friends). Old (Eastern) Europe has broken away from sovietization and become New Europe. Asia and Africa have been freed and the emancipation and emergence of India and China as major economic and military powers are beginning to recast international relations.

Ruminating over this raises the question : What value the sacrifices of those millions who died? What would they say to the world of today?
How do we remember them? Should we remember them or should we get on with our own lives?

Every country, town and village has its monument to the dead of its various wars. What exactly are they remembering?

I first asked this question a long time ago, when they decided to build a cenotaph in Singapore to remember those who died during the Japanese occupation. Around the acrimonious negotiations over what the Japanese should pay as reparatory contribution towards the construction of the cenotaph, much ink was spilt over war-time atrocities ( on the one hand) and the heroism (on the other).

Finally the monument was built - on land not far away from my old secondary school, The Raffles Institution, (which itself a historic monument, had to give way many years later, to the fact that for over a hundred and thirty-odd years it had occupied an economically strategic site).

The poem below was first drafted during the arguments over how much the dead were worth in reparations

Japan is among the largest foreign trading partners of my country.


Cenotaph

they have built a cenotaph
to remember that you died.
long ago heads on bamboo poles
adorned bridges, we remember
but understand memories can't be thicker
than joint projects.

we will come with abacus
to calculate among your bones
the veneration due you
in churches and mosques
you never prayed in, forgetting
that your bones are temples
you often walked in

Many years ago I wrote articles, a poem and spoke against the Vietnam War. As a student leader it was normal to do so with feeling.

I have not written against the Iraq war, even though I have very strong views against what is happening. Have the thirty odd years that have passed made participation and speech less necessary? Is it a sign of maturity at last? Or an admission that it doesn't matter anyway what anyone says - they will do what they want and all we can do is get on with our own lives and hope for the best.

This of course brings up many questions such as what is the true meaning of democracy? By the people for the people of course. But by which people and for which other people? On what terms and conditions? Is it actually democracy when small caucuses in political parties select candidates so the majority can rubber stamp their choices and eventually say one candidate has won universal confidence? Or is this just another form of skewed choice ensuring only those who have sectarian interests get the chance to have their name on ballots? What difference then with a system where the ruling persons allow ' free' ballots with carefully chosen opponents and score 98.75% of the votes? Of course democratic elections are not that bad.

But this again begs the question:

Maybe war is just part of human nature. Are we not after all the killer ape?



the war

today as yesterday, the day before
the land stalks her enemy:
history does not lie,
the land is war prone
though the people are by nature
gentle, their souls peaceful.
it is the old instinct for blood
that detonates bombs, creates swamps
trains innocents to exult massacring
the next tribe, in the old hunt.

in another hunt
in Vietnam, today the killer ape
sacrifices to the old instincts,
crawling through this booby trap of a nation
into the daily news, lamenting the loss
of ceremonial destruction.


from Once the Horsemen and Other Poems
University Education Press, Singapore 1972

We don't usually bother too much with it but death touches all of us sooner or later. The death of someone close can be devastating if one is caught unprepared. But how does one prepare for loss and the grieving that follows? The death of my mother was something I had long prepared for. She was after all past 80 and her health had deteriorated. But when it happened it was still a shock. The five thousand year old death rites I performed with my brothers and sisters brought the necessary distancing between raw emotion and a controlled grief, but has not dimmed the sadness.

Humans have since earliest times invoked the continuation of the spirit in another realm. Protected and cherished if one had been good, persecuted and tortured otherwise. Belief in continuity eased the pain and if one believed in reincarnation the cyclic nature of life made loss less finite. Animistic beliefs gave way, became religions.

Religion was and still is a primary concern of humans, though the differences between religions and their followers have resulted in injustices, wars and suffering and death and is a factor even now with calls for holy wars and talk of axis of evil.

Religious rites are sold as the correct way to do things and have normally to be interpreted by special individuals who have been instructed - priests. Since time immemorial the priestly class has exercised a certain control over death and its rites and in doing so exercised real political power.
This I had realized early in life but had forgotten, putting death and its rites away to study, work and raise a family. But one cannot really escape death; it comes at you from the front pages, the news bulletins and the passing of loved ones.

All one can do is try to understand and hope. Or else mock the sour poet:

from sadness unending

because death is around some corner
we walk in avenues of love
defying idols cast in our image
challenging the voices of the sea
mocking the sour poet
walking alone in his mind
singing of death to himself
gathering dew in his night eyes
aware that no morning sun
will dry the tears of the dead
or the dying.




stanza 3, sadness unending
Commentary Vol 4, No. 2
University of Singapore Society, 1980