In a Park in the East
Original (原作) by Ong Jing Heng
It’s a beautiful misunderstanding. There is no autumn here
but there are autumn sales. Countless flowers and
one bearded woman tucked in a glass cabinet account for the
season’s coastal winds. Refugees, fashion designers, fatalists
encounter one another, clutching tourist maps, shaking privately
along the ever-widening oceanic gulf, almost like the sweet love
of a cowering cat at Burma Street’s temple
of the London Tea House’s imperial playlist
Canton Street’s unaccented exhaust pipes
they look to me like bamboo reeds
emitting their own bubbles of language
Land reclamation is a process conducted by wandering bodies
whether it’s political imprisonment on the twenty-eighth floor of Komtar
or raising the flag under the watch of the mountains,
Penang
will always be the bloated tortoise shell
drifting away from the rest of Malay,
its city lights now unrecognizable
this is a not a wakeable dream, the bridge carries all that it can
three hundred and sixty five extinguished flames wear me out