Leaving Home, Mother

One Side of the Seventies

Singapore unheralded

I�ve come home to you again

Having left, if you remember,

Ungazetted

������Paying my own way,

Yes, on a barter ticket.

������Cheaper this way.

I don�t work for the UN, you know.

Anyway, if I have to brush away

More than a year of the dust

Accumulated in the city

Of third gear, where else but here?

������O cleaner than ever, greener than ever

������I taxied back in NTUC comfort

������And all the way from the Airport

������I thought of Devan Nair.

A few days later, at Shenton Way,

How the skyline has lifted!

Looking up from Robinson Road

(And here, I can always look up)

I see less of our sky �

At least it is still blue.

Maybe, still nothing is new

Except what is forgotten.

And so I hope I may see

More of what is less apparent.

O Donald is no moore

���The impresario excepting

Who though his goods were rare

���Preceded gracious living.

But thank Nanyang University

���for George Thomson

And for its daily Asean beauty

���Thank the New Nation;

How else could it survive its straits

���To serve the times?

Thank Alan Choe the Old Market�s

���Around, but where are RI�s remains?

O where are the crackers

���On Chinese New year�s eve?

The next day, according to the papers

���That while garden still, we�ve

Now gone global.

���Asia that was instant here

Has now gone international.

���It could only happen here.

Where the journey from instant

To international can be

As short as it takes one slogan

To replace another.

Where expectations zoom

And buildings outbid

Each other to scrape the sky

And a people accustomed

To scaling up and up,

Despite slides and near-tumbles

And legislative shocks

Which they learn to absorb,

Forget how to look back

But take for granted that up

Is the only direction.

Is it apparent that we�ve

Gone beyond survival?

I�m sure it�s not a case

Of Raja interpreting

McLuhan for the third world;

I�m sure it�s real?

Real as Raffles� unfamiliar

Gaze over reclaimed land

Across from the bridge

Or across the river where

He watches steel girders

Scaffold the sky.