10 P.M. by the Singapore River
Samuel Tan
Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse 2009 (view all the winners)
Second Prize
Night, illuminated
by the multitudinous fragments
of a thinking city.
Languid giants tower over
cruising bumboats breaking through
the river's reflective reverie.
The waters, skirted seductively
by vibrant shophouses, stir
closely-guarded memories;
and people, going about
various little lives.
He looks around.
Solitaire in that cubicle.
Gossip at the pantry.
Supper orders.
No one's leaving.
"I'm still at work, dear;
maybe midnight,"
he tells the telephone;
it doesn't reply.
I'm making a living for them,
he thinks resolutely,
earning my family's keep.
He gazes out his window,
its light gently caressing
the dreaming river.
He looks behind
as his mind drifts momentarily.
I'm making waves,
the bumboat operator thinks,
each turn and bob
adds to the dance on the river's surface:
I am a brush
and the water is my canvas.
He smiles to himself.
It's only his second day on the job;
he was retrenched last month.
But tonight he's riding his wave,
tending his flock,
serving his customers:
Elgin Bridge, Coleman Bridge,
and the winds, always the winds,
mixing the sounds of lovers and lives:
the clinking and laughing and strumming.
She looks beside herself:
her second guitarist chats
with a pretty face in the sound crew,
the drummer is lost in some other rhythm,
and her bassist carefully tunes his guitar
as the emcee finishes his speech.
She smiles at her audience,
at herself, and at the river;
a little connection before a show never hurts.
She's been doing this since she was eighteen;
"something about the love for music,"
she always told her fans.
Now the emcee has introduced them.
It's the thirty-second gig of her career,
and it will be her very best.
This is a city alive: the old waters
observe, remember;
young giants stand firm
like watchtowers over a fortress;
and people—precious, fleeting ones—
wander along the river's dreams.
Each night sparkles
with the little lives
of the thinking city.
