The Planners - Boey Kim Cheng

They plan. They build. All spaces are gridded,
filled with permutations of possibilities.
The buildings are in alignment with the roads
which meet at desired points
linked by bridges all hang
in the grace of mathematics.
They build and will not stop.
Even the sea draws back
and the skies surrender.

They erase the flaws,
the blemishes of the past, knock off
useless blocks with dental dexterity.
All gaps are plugged
with gleaming gold.
The country wears perfect rows
of shining teeth.
Anaesthesia, amnesia, hypnosis.
They have the means.
They have it all so it will not hurt,
so history is new again.
The piling will not stop.
The drilling goes right through
the fossils of last century.

But my heart would not bleed
poetry. Not a single drop
to stain the blueprint
of our past's tomorrow.

Sudder Street, Calcutta by Boey Kim Cheng

The blackout arrives punctually, bringing to life
the meagre light of so many brief candles.
This is the shrine of suffering's patron saint,
where man's body falls asunder, beseiged walls
crumbling, helpless, as death tunnels underground
with tonnes of dynamite, to blow the body heavenward.

On Sudder Street the same procession of beggars
in inexhaustible variations of deformity and need,
peddlers offering passages to temporary nirvana,
the brown sugar girl and her magic mushrooms.
A human rickshaw canters by, yoked
to the ledger of debts from previous lives.
He is dragging alone, his feet pain-proof,
the sum of things unexplained.
Deserted angels lie sprawled on Sudder Street,
beauty broken in God's terrible neglect.

The hands of this poem are useless stumps.
They cannot even begin to turn the page.
I come from a race that has no word for despair.
My culture is purged of poverty's germs, its language
a propaganda of faith in absolute health.
I even doubt my ABC.

Perhaps I am looking in the wrong archives
for my history, checking the wrong catalogues,
tracing irrelevant titles. Perhaps I should stop
subscribing to foreign publications which inform me
of happenings on the other planets.

On Sudder Street my mind is numb.
My legs are thinking hard. They hold long dialogues
with cul-de-sacs and turn to frail candles
for illumination. I had better decide soon
whether it is health or sickness that I want.

But tonight let me take my place
among the forlorn angels of Sudder Street.