Street Scene with Lanterns

Listen

The lilting refrains

Of morning ebbs away slowly

Leaving behind a film

Of late afternoon wetness

(Have the gods wept in joy

Or in grief?)

'

In Chinatown

The ten-feet tarry road

Bristles with the unfamiliar

Feet; slippered or cloth-shoed,

The red of new beams, indignant

whitewash, jade-green

roof tiles printed or

Smudged in the black waters

There are daubs of paint

telling stories like a pensive

discreet photographer whose

mission is to forget

'

She sits, as the driver maneuvers

corners unused to the grind of wheels

Her hands, between each white

palm a silken hanker-chief

Folded, clasped in her

Timelessness

'

Lanterns,

sagging off the pagoda

In a jumble of

weight and widths

They loom upwards as

She passed, eyes averted

From prosperity and double-

Happiness, cinnabar-

Red on rice paper

She cannot bear the

Affability of good fortune

'

"So many people.

Go by another road"

(She was irritated, half-ashamed)

'

In Chinatown

The ten-feet tarry road

Sighed when the westerner's

monster shrugged away,

Painting itself quietly

Out of the scene

'

And below, the cotton

couple smelling of straw

And late-afternoon market

dust; they shuffled on and

The artist sketches, sketches

Though it is too late for likeness

'

(Lanterns,

Sagging off the pagoda)

They are

Swaying, swaying

In her wake

---

Footnotes

Based roughly on an oil-on-board painting "Street Scene with Lanterns" by Arthur Johnson, 1952, last seen at the National University of Singapore, University Cultural Center, Singapore