After Chief Minister of Sabah Tun Fuad Stephens’ letter to Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew the day after the latter’s separation from Malaysia on 10 August 1965 (link)
If there really was a plan,
who could divine it
who knew what reasons were had to be had?
Who knew where we would end up at the end?
Who knew just how much it would cost to spend
everything, and everyone away.
Was this what happened yesterday,
when you said that betrayal
was unthinkable?
When you claimed that a man for others
is a man unmistakeable?
When you left the stain of your touch
on my table—
where others need to eat!—
where others need to feel able
to make the leap too.
You don't know how much it is
for a leap of faith to have to be made anew
This time over the dead,
over the place where our friendship ran red,
over the face of my own respect.
Over an emerging tide,
taking out to sea
all those who had fled.
I am only a Herald
of what has returned for the rest.
I am only Mentalic
because of the shards of the desert
you failed to prepare against,
embedded in the strains of anything that can be read.
I read a lot as a child.
I, too, was colonised by the British Isles,
and by Trantor's gunmental arms.
I, too, all this while
have longed to see the sun.
I wish, when it appeared,
at the behest and test of time
it had had the better sense to run
from all you would one day become.
I sometimes wish you had never been mine.
My friend.
The one who changed my mind.