Sungei Sudah Larut
I went down
To the Sungei,
And dove in
With my clothes on.
I wanted to let the waves of thoughts
wash over me,
While my feet touched the riverbed.
The promise of riches
Led me to one of
The Orang Sungai;
His smile invited me
to sieve through
his treasure of trinkets.
My fingers splayed out,
desperate,
to clutch onto something
to remember this place by.
They came from upstream, you know.
With their suits, signages and their speakers.
They came to take our River from us.
Look at it from our perspective,
they shout
from the top
of their ivory towers.
We are called
‘opportunistic traders’
and an inconvenience,
but never by our names.
I found a different kind
of treasure
down at the river.
Eighty years of keeping
their civilization afloat,
tapi sungai in sudahpun larut.
River Runs Dry
Today in Geography class I learnt
How climate change
Among other things,
Causes rivers to dry up.
Something about agriculture
And man’s impact on the environment.
Perhaps if I listened more closely
I’d know why
The flow of the Mekong Delta
Suffocates on its many dams, and that
Irrigation hinders The Nile’s descent
Into the Mediterranean Sea
Or how the promise
Of change
And a better railway station
Snuffs
Sungei Road out,
Leaving in its wake
A barren river bed.
Fishermen Wives
They say that
Fishermen go out to sea
Before the dawn spills over,
That their wives wait
Three days before declaring
Their husbands lost at sea.
Let me be your lighthouse,
And keep vigil over
The wind-lashed waves,
Let me scour for
A glimpse
Of your boat
O’er the horizon,
And the sight of
Your bronzed skin
Cured by salt
And the sea wind.
Let the tide guide
Your vessel back into port,
As you anchor your hands
Around mine.
Reel me in
With your tales of far-off
Unmapped islands
While I drift out
Into the open sea of slumber.
For I know,
That if I were to wake
In the pitch of night
From dreams that defy description
The snare of your embrace will
Always tighten around me
And the only place
That I’d risk getting shipwrecked is in
Your ocean eyes.