The Portrait of a Sentenced Library by Alfian Sa'at

So these bricks will be torn down
And books will still not have learnt
To spread their feathers and fly
Like pigeons from a shaken tree

So this balustrade will be dismantled
Perhaps reassembled somewhere else -
A conch paperweight by my head is a beach.
Each hour from a postcard Big Ben chimes.

This is the logic of nostalgia -
This is what I mean when I say
That my memory is selfish.
Who can guarantee that roaming

Through a tunnel I will find again
The Children's Section, where a boy walked
With 'the Little Prince' in his hands,
His smile the first line of a novel

Neither of us had read before?
One cymbal left in Chinatown.
Blueprints and forums and rhetoric ensure
That a firecracker makes no sound.

So the shattered glass of Van Kleef Aquarium
Still magnifies the eyelashes of students.
So the ragged screen of Capitol Cinema
Still shudders as a Pontianak drips black blood.

Only in dreams. Under separate stars.
I had one last night; of sitting at S-11
With the usual bunch of affectionate liars,
Skinny artists, red-eyed dreamers,

When suddenly a book appeared in the sky
Like a carrier pigeon that had escaped
From the ruins of the library.
It landed, without a murmur,

On my shoulder. I opened that book,
Expecting a cry for help, a refugee's plea.
What I found instead was this poem
That did not know how to end. Only when.

The Planners by 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.

Singapore River by Koh Buck Song

there was a time
it could be said
the old subject
stretched its rule
in the empire
of the easel

now, refreshed,
the lady revels
in another reign,
clear, iridescent

fresh winds have carried
the old tang away
and in this revival
a new mirror
re-projects, rules
the new imagery

The Civil Servant by Roger Jenkins

When surgery’s a necessity, who hesitates?
When it’s an option, well,
that takes some thinking, doesn’t it?
So it was with the river.
we lived with it for years, you see,
its notorious whiff of decay,
the bankside scum and lighter congestion,
the quaint unloading of the boats
a nostalgic reminder of a way of trade
backwatered by containers and computerization.
When the PM said, “In ten years time
let us have fishing in the Singapore River.
It can be done,” well – it had to be.
But how? A labour of Hercules lay before us.
A river is a system fed by many streams;
clean the rivers meant clean most of the island.
A major operation.
When we began The Clean Rivers Campaign
we felt as if the surgeon had cut open the belly
to find the cancer spread through the body.
It involved so many – from environment,
health, sewage, drainage, housing,
pollution control, primary production –
oyou can imagine the problems of co-ordination.
And the result?
Farewell Bugis Street, goodbye Chinatown.
Relocate the bumboats to Pasir Panjang.
Resettle hawkers, close down the pig farms,
rehouse squatters far from their communities.
These were the costs we couldn’t count.
Luckily, the river’s a marvelous patient:
stop the infection and it heals itself.
“After the rains, fresh blood flows in old veins.”
Now the city’s heart pours its cleaner, greener waters
through a body working ever harder,
transformed in the ‘90s into – well,
a human, leisure-friendly environment,
yet incomplete.
The river’s renewal made the body whole
but in the process we misplaced its soul.
We can’t devise an action plan for that,
unfortunately.

Singapore River by Lee Tzu Pheng

The operation was massive;
designed to give new life
to the old lady.
We have cleaned out
her arteries, removed
detritus and silt,
created a by-pass
for the old blood.
Now you can hardly tell
her history.

We have become
so health-conscious
the heart
can sometimes be troublesome.