Page 11
Three Pieces by Tan Jing Qwee
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Page 11
Three Pieces by Tan Jing Qwee |
ONE CAMPBELL STREET You cannot retile the past With gaily paved malls Clean up the toilets Display food within glass panels To narrate a lie for tourist dollars The past has fled Along dark lit alleys The flight of rats and green flies The meows of stray cats Memory sieves out scurrying cockroaches Banish putrid smells from dank gullies Plaster old walls with fake vibrancy The past did not exist in pastel pink But stubborn grime and dirt On unwashed floors and walls The past is a well of tears From impoverished years Buried and discarded junk Opiate and lonely proximity In dark crowded cubicles Preservation shall not conceal layered ruins Only a surrogate novelty will arise from the ashes |
| TWO AT THE CORNER OF CINTRA STREET A salivating queue quietly formed On foot, bicycles , in cars The tauhu vendor dished out Bowls, plastic bags of white milk A warm dessert on the way home You came to savour the present, not the past Alfresco dining on side streets Red table cloths, red napkins, Tiger beer, Curry beehoon, Penang koay tiao, laksa, inchi kabin, spiced crabs, steamed prawns, baked ikan kurau, bar charng and hamchinpeng. The past is what you imagine The present just is, a willing palate ***** |
| THREE BATU FERRINGHI The bridge spans like an umbilical cord Linking the pearl to the heart FROM TANJONG BUNGAH The road bends with the winds The sea on your right towering condominiums on your left suffocating the jagged climb the rounded, chiselled foreign rocks BATU FERRINGHI IN THE SUN Gaudy shacks, loud vendors Garish cafes and bars The gentle breeze of Penang seduces Does a feeling of love arise With the tide, moon and the stars Rasa sayang, rasa sayang eh Let your feet touch the golden sands To feel the mutiara of the seas IN THE CITY The streets tug you to tarry for a while The E & O lay in rubble, expectant Hotel 1926 glitters in renewed shades The Khoo Kongsi glows with soft pearls In the golden dusk PENANG IN TRANSITION The rocks glisten in the heat Will she stay with the sands Or rise concretely to meet the sky |
| ______ INDEX Point to the article that you want to read, and CLICK Home
Baba sayings
Book Review
Hotel 1926
Lim Cheng Ean
Penang seen
Theatre 1920
Three poems
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Editorial consultants: Mr and Mrs Lim Teong Beng Technical advisor: Tony Ooi
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| ____________________ The Penang File Issue 22 |