Michael Hulse        

Singapore

Say a colonial sailed up the straits and saw

a fishing village.  And set foot in a city.

            Say the future was opium

     traded for tea, parades on the padang.

Secret societies, rickshaws on Collyer Quay,

and riots in the streets.  Say an Armenian

            bought the villa where a bankrupt

     colonel had opened a tiffin parlour,

and made a white hotel, a place of collonades

and frangipani, palms, pilasters, rattan blinds,

            piano waltzes in the court:

     the marriage of the bride to the roué.

And while men died at the Somme and at Passchendaele

a barman was (gently) shaking the first gin sling.

            While General Percival puffed

     and dallied, refusing to fortify

Singapore on the landward side, the Japanese

were riding down the peninsula on bikes.  For

            History is a seduction:

     cocktails on the verandah, then dinner

at eight, and the stylish contempt of the waiters.

After the rain the sky is open again.  Stars

            are holed in the indigo night.

     A British lord and lady lead their guests

to a private banquet where pipers are playing

“Scotland the Brave”.  An Australian swears that the

last tiger killed on the island

     was shot underneath the billiard table.

This is the idiot empire.  I’m lapping the

pool past midnight, thinking of Dad, and a jazz band’s

            playing in the bar.  After the

     war he dealt in textiles in Raffles Place,

and one day his driver came early to warn him

and hurry him to a villa where Englishmen

            waited armed behind shutters all

     the fanatical afternoon and night,

making light of their fears, but whispering, watching,

alert for a palm to sway as these do now, in

            the innocent air, trembling with

     the darker breathing of the saxophone.

©1988 Michael Hulse.  Reproduced with permission of the author.