Postcolonial Calculus in Kristang, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Individuate
Poem in English and Kristang
It's very simple: the curve under the graph,
bos mistih kalih, kung tirah, kung trukah fikah
ngua medensa mas forsa, ngua lugah teng onsong sa korsang
animu, ati ja birah, pra tempu prumiru,
ngua sintidu di animega-animega.
What have you learnt in school? Why don't you know this?
Kifoi tudu bolotu justu kereh sabeh keng teng erodis
di bos sa kaza, kung kumiria, kung doi, kung distansia di Atlantis -
undi teng bos sa ropa dispidu? Bos sa ireidis?
Klai bos lembrah nus sa prima-primang-primu podih olah riska di Trigelis?
They learned to see by their own sight, without the light of what one could see:
Pra fazeh matematika chadu, isti angkoza-angkoza justu mistih:
ngua sense of wonder, ngua korsang kung mulera abrih
di tudu otru kultura kung festa kung meza sa kumiria, na mparti undi-undi
nus podih abrih porta, konstrah kaza, bara undi-undi nenang ingkontrah tristi
sa maris, trumenteza sa nobis.
Maliduensa sa siaria-siuris.
You didn't really need to know all this.
You just needed to sit, and feel, and dream
your way into the chorus, the singing time of your life, a dauntless
resurrecting of all you enjoyed before that first morning where you kissed
a real devil, straight on the lips
that he stole from your own hunky frame, and your own beautiful armpits.
(In a poem supposedly about calculus, you can't argue that this doesn't fit.)
In a poem about individuation,
all you need to know is written in light as clear as the rainbow's beautiful iris:
It's never a test,
only a witness to your own well-being,
your own story,
your own fitness,
differentiated and integrated without end until even the stars from Singapore's shores
are the clearest.