From the Visual to the Literary: Three Poems Inspired by Lim Cheng Hoe's Singapore River

In conjunction with Lim Cheng Hoe: Painting Singapore, three poets responded to Lim’s 1962 painting Singapore River. Transforming the visual into the literary, these poets reflect and expand on themes and feelings evoked by Lim’s watercolour piece. 
 

Singapore River, 1962

By Heng Siok Tian

Why do you blow her surface with colours? (what of her cruising insides?)

Which are your pains? (How do the bruising bumboats sway you)

Who are those you reach to hold? Do you quiver with their sighs?

From land, you trace slivers of living in broad rivers and streams.

For perspective: crossing curves and lines at far ends on canvas;

lively orange roof-cover of foregrounded sampan and working men as bent, brushed blobs;

blues diluted, greys calm, birds, creatures, fish near muddy water edge

with a faint but clean wood-stick to guide our eye on this water level

furthering its history onto the lined buildings and warehouses at the other end,

conquerors and merchants alike,

This is no river of Babylon. You do not weep there.

It is an ancient river of pleasures and pains. It’s sungei, 河and nati.

A river is a river by any name, do the drops agree with each other like passing souls?

she who moves, murmurs, shivers, whirs; whoosing, splashing, wishing, singing,

buried within.

On land, are you catching currents? Do you measure ocean drops with breath-stroke?

Do I measure your brush strokes? Do you feel that all rivers run into the sea? How might I keep current with you? She gathering you, you gliding over to me, all of us still voyaging on a riverbed,

asleep and awake.

HENG SIOK TIAN has published 5 personal collections of poetry, co-authored a book of short stories and an anthology of poems. She has been an educator for 28 years, and previously served as library programme officer and media services specialist in MOE Headquarters, and Principal Consultant (English) in a college.

Still, life

By Werner Kho

Everything that moves here comes

to life; quiet murmurs

across the decks, the whine

of engines travelling

towards the quay. A flash of red

sways on the water’s surface

like a blooming flame

burning in the still morning.

The river is as much alive

as its reflection, its currents

pulsing and moving the city

like those who tread along it.

I sit as motionless as the buildings behind.

Only my hand flows across the canvas.

WERNER KHO is currently reading Arts Management at LASALLE College of the Arts. His work has been featured in journals such as Softblow and QLRS and anthologies such as In Transit and We Contain Multitudes: Twelve Years of Softblow. His first collection of poems, Afterimage, was published in 2018 by Math Paper Press.

Singapore River, 1962

By Edwin Thumboo

You have seen me, time and again, in painting,

sketch, and passing glance. Taken photos. Smelt.

Having lived long, mixing with other destinies,

I have many tales. These, sedikit, are for today.

                               So listen.

When the final thaw released me from that

in extremis ice-age grip, I rose to claim my

banks. Palm and mangrove. Bush and creeper

flower daily; sparkle and irradiate; garnish

pockets of shade. Bees buzz pollinate. Pristine

streams murmur among rocks, glide over brown

pebbles. Fish dart here and there, past crab

and shrimp. Light and shade, too, play hide and

seek on shimmering waters. As otters gambol

in their favorite cove, elephant, tiger, deer, black

panther and boar, come to drink. Most vivid is 

Kingfisher’s royal plunge. The flurry of feathers

transforms into widening ripples, fading silently. A

soft merging, as when salty waves enter my mouth.

Everything in rhythm, in season.

Orang Laut, and more, settle, slash and burn; trap

and harvest. A quiet life.

Then they came in ocean

ships from western shores. Driven by appetite;

less by soul. Extended explosive, global empires.

How they used, abused and maimed. Filth. Decay.

My slow dying. These I try to forget. But not, never, 

that recent great clean up, the husbandry and after care.

Look at me today.

My banks are architecture, start-ups, discos, eateries;

munching in converted quays, where fusion juggles 

classic hawker food. A yen for yuan. Museums, bars.

What tourists love away from home.

                                                                 And governance-

planning for the future’s promise and uncertainty.

Attract those we want, yet keep it first for SGians.

They stroll, Grandpa in wheelchair; cyclists, in twos,

manoeuvre adroitly. The careful flower beds and shrubs

are pleasures of a Garden City.

Flowing into Barrage still waters, I have little rise and

fall. With Rochor and Kallang, now as tidy, we feed

      a new lake, gradually salt free. Its dreams surely

                out do mine, as I await they who capture

      me in paint, ink, and now, gizmos,

                                         for more

                                          Art.  

EDWIN THUMBOO is Emeritus Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore. He received the Singapore Cultural Medallion in 1980, the ASEAN Cultural and Communication Award in Literature in 1987, the Raja Rao Award in 2002, and the Meritorious Service Medal Singapore in 2006.