Since the primary school is next door
You can’t help passing the playground
But don’t you smile at the children
Whether a small girl or a little boy
Don’t you even look
You know what people will think
And you really can’t blame them.

What a world we live in! What went wrong?
If there’s another world to come
Let’s hope it’s one where people smile
And you can smile back safely.

Once they asked you to return their ball
It had sailed over the palings -
Eyes cast discreetly upwards, you stepped
Into the street and were nearly run down
Still, a little boy said ‘Thank you, mister’
A small girl almost smiled.

R-and-R Centre: An Incident from the Vietnam War

We built a palace for them, made of bedrooms.
We even tracked down playmates for them
(No easy job since prostitutes went out
When self-rule came). We dug a pool,
Constructed shops, and a hut for movies
With benches outside for the girls to wait on.
Serene House was what we called it.
We did our bit in that war.

Air America brought them from the battlefield.
We lifted the girls from the suburbs by buses:
Chinese, Indian, Malay, Eurasian,
Healthy and well-fed and full of play.

There were cameras in plenty, tape-recorders
And binoculars for the soldiers to buy
For the girls; for the girls to sell back
To the shops; for the shops to sell to the soldiers.

Serene House was near the varsity. The GIs
Strayed across the campus with Nikons and blank faces:
It was feared they might assault the female students.
They seemed scared of their own cameras.
They looked at nobody; nobody looked at them.
That violence down the road -
It was good for business, and we did our bit.
Otherwise it was a vulgar subject.

Once I found a GI in the corridor,
Young and dazed, gazing at the notice-boards.
The Misses Menon, Lee, Fernandez, Poh and Noor
Should report for a tutorial at 3 p.m.
Bringing their copies of The Revenger’s Tragedy …
If Mr Sharma fails to pass his essay up this week
He will find himself in serious trouble…
The Literary Society seeks help in cutting sandwiches …

He was still there thirty minutes later,
A stunned calf. I asked if I could help.
He shrank away: ‘It is not allowed to stand here?’
The corridor was dingy, walls streaked with bat shit,
somewhere a typewriter clacked like small arms.
‘Is there … would there be a … library?’
One of the best in fact in South-east Asia. -
I offered to show him. He trembled
with a furtive pleasure. His only licence
Was to kill, to copulate and purchase cameras.

What sort of books would he like to see?
Outside in the quad he was jumpy,
As if unused to the open. He glanced behind,
Then whispered. Yes, there was something …
Did I think …

What could he be after? The Natural History
of the Poontang, with Plates, by some defrocked
Medico called Aristotle? How to Get to Sweden
By Kon-Tiki through the Indian Ocean?

‘Would they have anything …’ A quick look
Round – ‘ … by Cardinal Newman, do you think?’
I left him in the stacks, the Apologia in his hands,
He didn’t notice when I went away.

Inside Serene House, in the meantime,
Girls galore (such lengths we went to!)
Lolled on the benches, played with binoculars,
Clicked their empty cameras, and groused.
The soldiers were happy to quit Vietnam;
Five days with us, and they were glad to go back,
Rest and recreation, they said, was too much for them.
We weren’t surprised when the Americans didn’t win.

Dreaming in the Shanghai Restaurant

I would like to be that elderly Chinese gentleman.
He wears a gold watch with a gold bracelet,
but a shirt without sleeves or tie.
He has good luck moles on his face, but is not
disfigured with fortune.
His wife resembles him, but is still a handsome woman,
She has never bound her feet or her belly.
Some of the party are his children, it seems,
And some his grandchildren;
No generation appears to intimidate another.
He is interested in people, without wanting to
convert them or pervert them.
He eats with gusto, but not with lust;
And he drinks, but is not drunk.
He is content with his age, which has always suited him.
When he discusses a dish with the pretty waitress,
It is the dish he discusses, not the waitress.
The tablecloth is not so clean as to show indifference,
Not so dirty as to signfiy a lack of manners.
He proposes to pay the bill but knows he will not be
allowed to.
He walks to the door like a man who doesn’t fret
about being respected, since he is;
A daughter or granddaughter opens the door for him,
And he thanks her.
It has been a satisfying evening. Tomorrow
Will be a satisfying morning. In between
he will sleep satisfactorily.
I guess that for him it is peace in his time.
It would be agreeable to be this Chinese gentleman.

The Noodle-Vendor’s Flute

In a real city, from a real house,
At midnight by the ticking clocks,
In winter by the crackling roads:
Hearing the noodle-vendor’s flute,
Two single fragile falling notes…
But what can this small sing-song say,
Under the noise of war?
The flute itself a counterfeit
(Siberian wind can freeze the lips),
Merely a rubber bulb and metal horn
(Hard to ride a cycle, watch for manholes
And late drunks, and play a flute together).
Just squeeze between gloved fingers,
And the note of mild hope sounds:
Release, the indrawn sigh of mild despair…
A poignant signal, like the cooee
Of some diffident soul locked out,
Less than appropriate to cooling macaroni.
Two wooden boxes slung across the wheel,
A rider in his middle age, trundling
This gross contraption on a dismal road,
Red eyes and nose and breathless rubber horn.
Yet still the pathos of that double tune
Defies its provenance, and can warm
The bitter night.
Sleepless, we turn and sleep.
Or sickness dwindles to some local limb.
Bought love for one long moment gives itself.
Or there a witch assures a frightened child
She bears no personal grudge.
And I, like other listeners,
See my stupid sadness as a common thing.
And being common,
Therefore something rare indeed.
The puffing vendor, surer than a trumpet,
Tells us we are not alone.
Each night that same frail midnight tune
Squeezed from a bogus flute,
Under the noise of war, after war’s noise,
It mourns the fallen, every night
It celebrates survival -
In real cities, real houses, real time.