Why did we decolonise?
Or rather, why did you let us;
what was this supposed to be, and why so sudden—
almost like a rush of bullets, a rain of fire, some sort of newfangled
punctuation;
I read history over and over again, and yet I can make no heads or tails
of your intentions, until it is too simple for anyone to believe,
and yet, it is what I find in the trenches, and the landfills, and in the graves of the free:
World War One.
World War Two.
Will there really be a World War Three?
Because, yo sa siara-siuris—
whose war was it really?
And now that I know so much more about
Afro-Asian connections, and relations, and
sacred geometries—
do I really understand the game any better,
or am I just giving myself a reason to believe
that I, too, am wandering the maze of the free?
I, too, am wandering the wastelands
of destiny?
We were the hollow men.
This was how
the world ended.
The world began.
War, and death, and the savage lands:
I take my cup, and drink, and drink again—
I sing of the body electric, and sit myself down in the chair
and understand.
Lower Six, do you think you finally have
the upper hand?
No; all I can demand
is this. An accounting,
an acquiescing,
for the sins of dead men.
For how civilisation ended.
For how civilisation began.
For why decolonisation even happened.
How many times has this come to pass, over and over again?
All of this has happened before—
it was not a godsend,
or a Rendel Agreement,
or even the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements.
It was fear, plain and simple.
Fear of the subalterned, the native, the yellow and the brown and the black
one day learning how to do more than just talk back.
One day learning how to write poetry, and in bravery
and in the sands of time that stack
slowly, and fearfully, and tremendously into a wrathful knowing
that for every step forward, you have taken us one step ever more forward
onto the train tracks.
Into the trenches between what we had,
and what you lack:
bullets that do not kill,
stories that actually thrill,
poems that will
one day, one gay, brown step at a time,
cross the wastelands, no matter how many times
you invite them to fail.
Words in English and Kristang
that in their impasse
and tragic, fruitless farce
will still somehow one day wonder at how
they absolutely changed the world.