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Moving People With Words

Poems on the MRT

Lines from Batu Ferringhi by Goh Poh Seng

 

The hour has come
When night descends,
Gathering around me,
Courting
With its silence.
On this lonely beach
Far from the city,
Far from havoc,
The night becomes
Almost hourless,
A continuous moment
Within which I’m enclosed:
A world within a world,
Whole as a blue
Balloon idling in the air.

Speaking in undertones,
Tide ripples whisper
As if they were alone.

It's time to move on,
Return home,
Although home’s only
A rented room.
Never mind. After all
Homeliness can’t simply be
Measured by the amount
Of furnishing.
It’s what I can invest
Within bare walls,
Where my mind’s at ease,
My spirit can come to rest.

I walk away, lurching a bit,
A bit tentative, this first day;
It’s only the first day,
I would not fret the slow-settling,
Should instead take delight
In this refluent shore
Where the lighthouse by the headland
Has begun flitting its light;
A beacon to lost ships,
And, hopefully, lost souls
Who will be renewed by sleep.

Published in Lines from Batu Ferringhi (1977)

Goh Poh Seng, a playwright, novelist and poet, is regarded as a pioneer of Singapore Literature in English. A medical doctor by training, his first novel If We Dream Too Long is widely recognized as the first Singapore novel, while his play When Smiles are Done is one of the first instances of the use of Singlish in drama. Goh, who was born in 1936, has published four novels and five volumes of poetry. He founded the literary magazine Tumasek and formed Centre 65 to promote the arts. Goh also chaired the National Theatre Trust and was Vice-Chairman of the Arts Council from 1967 to 1973. Goh received the Cultural Medallion for Literature in 1982 and emigrated to Canada in 1986. He passed away in 2010 from Parkinson’s disease.

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Poems on the MRT is an initiative by the National Arts Council, in partnership with SMRT and Stellar Ace. Produced by Sing Lit Station, a local literary non-profit organisation, this collaboration displays excerpts of Singapore poetry throughout SMRT’s train network, integrating local literature into the daily experience of commuters. Look out for poems in English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil in trains on the East-West, North-South and Circle Lines, as well as videos created by local artists and featuring local poets in stations and on trains. The Chinese, Malay, and Tamil poems are available in both the original languages and English. To enjoy the full poems, commuters may read them on go.gov.sg/potm.

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