The Wallace Line
For Angela Hijjas
It’s Tuesday again, a week since the last
real poem arrived. My desk pours with
books of plants, of distant islands and Wallace
the great scientist, not the poet, whom we’ve
room to hate. You’d come to hate this room too,
hate the difference between wearing a first
and last name, as if in you would creep ghost
questions of art and science – which will last
longer, which is much more useful with
mothers. My mum didn’t call me Wallace
but something better. In a poet still we’ve
hope for science. Not that sudden that too
evolution shone true and I threw up my first
feet, danced into old courtrooms. O ghost,
it’s dark where I drown. Among the last
of man, I am bound to vanishing forests with
my tail light avenging on. Animals love Wallace,
even the Malayan ones he’s found, and we’ve
been foreign to how out of print like books too
they’ll go. But it’s different, how they disappear first
into words, like poems when written become ghosts.
Maybe Wallace knew. That beauty in lines can last
longer than dots spread out like a nest with
thorns at the wrong places. O malarial Wallace,
to catalogue and much more, who but you we’ve
owed for survival of the fittest, that Darwin too
could be jealous – of the letters which – to be first
to find his name tarry, like a poisoned ghost.
I’m jealous. Of both your findings, the last
survived the beauty of my homeland, with
flying frogs and fierce beetles, and the Wallace
line marking the side I stood on, who we’ve
come from – the philosophical and the magical, or too,
the old and the new. Yet I am your descendent first,
walking around with a book, seeking a ghost.
I’d wished there was more to be said, to last
deeper than missing gaps in lines. Even with
new compasses, can I still find what Wallace
has drawn and recollect? Maybe it’s time we’ve
crossed further than he would’ve, could’ve too,
carry his vision in jars, call out to animals first
within the porous line, cuscus spotting a ghost.
At last, the white lady comes, crosses with
marsupials of time the kind Wallace we’ve
known: poet and artist too. Before the first
multitude comes the hybrid man.
House and Man
Recently, my friend acquired an old
house in Penang, to be dismantled,
moved to Pahang, by his beach
site, its “former colonial glory” restored.
I used to be a keeper of coins,
but now, of photographs, mainly
black and white. Though once at 7,
I made blueprints of a miniature house,
for 4000 ice cream sticks to be stacked
on glue, lighting the circumference
of windows faded away. Later,
adults told me that even living in a tree
house was against growing up,
against the territorial instincts of man.
I gave in to that, for the world understands.
I started writing too, and was brought
in front of Rumah Uda Manap, standing
to smell the dust of its former hosts,
to hear doors creak shut after
the silence of the azan, pretending
that man and his past have formed
a perfect union on stilts. Suddenly,
this Malay house came to be the grand
mannequin, standing for all others
I’ve not seen, as if those would not exist,
like the pictures in The Traditional Malay
House, where different ones from Perak,
Pahang, or Negeri Sembilan (all shored up
in faded print) were washed together
by some river, with words like beam,
wattlework wall, senggora tiles, tiang seri
(with a coin underneath) captioned off
by a reticulated python swimming.
The house had found its new home
on another shore, rooted and restored.
The coins, so I read, were older, kept
beneath their bases. I was no longer
a keeper of coins, so no one ran the risk
of pillars crumbling before the house did.
But such fidelity finds no fortune, when
in this country, money is tucked straight
into pockets, never underground.
Nor would things be better
if I drew the layout of each Malay
house with words. Sound descriptions,
heroic structures plied into a shape
poem, such buildings will still furrow
under the thick bends of a paper clip.
Each brick will still be unpicked
in an architect’s fallen dream, his forceps
falling from finger to fingerprint.
At the main house though, I could
sit on the edge of “steel and concrete,”
of the “traditional Malay timber
architecture,” where green thickets
of kemuning overlooked the Malay
houses that once could’ve been there.
Whether design had faith, I’d still lift
my hanging arms from the loft, test
my own sustainability. Since here,
I’ve had to force myself from dying
friendships, and the wild question that
loomed ahead: why protect the dead
house, like a dead friendship? Many
from the past have left, and others
too, have grown tired of stilted alliances,
ruled out living in this ugly country.
Yet I am here, walking on a “covered
loggia,” unsure of symbols, of what Rumah
Uda Manap behind me, restored, was
or is, a new world appraised by trees.
I believe earlier, I spoke of the friend
who acquired an old house. He had built
this place, Rimbun Dahan, and his wife
still acquires it by planting local species.
Praised for being “young” with “a sense
of place,” I wondered if guilt would leave
me scattered, old as the wind. Far out,
monkeys danced their seconds away.
I felt as if nature would swarm up
as I swooned over gardens and history –
stop fixing the watch I’d been wearing
since 10. Like a curse, I’m taken back
to Malacca and Penang. My chest had
drooped while the shops showed up
pitiful and shabby, until recently UNESCO
relented and stamped them with the glow
of a world heritage site. Once, I threw
a coin into Hang Li Po’s well. I was 9,
and I waited for its shadow to drop
past my reflection. The coin had quivered
down to the base, and so I returned,
at 17, for chendol and pineapple tarts.
Like all wishes, there was a sacrifice.
I had to leave behind a Renaissance
friend, and forestall the laughter of dumb
mansions. In Penang, the one who took
too many photos to Photoshop; he was next
to go. Do you not know? To protect
a friendship, never visit a dead house.
As for the end, what’s worth saving?
My symbol of coins is pared down,
and their metaphors run, simple
as heads and tails. Trying to keep
new coins, (flashpoint for modernity
in tradition), I worry that I’d hoard
the literal joke – to have more money
or not. The coin that fell from eternity
fell on my cheek. And I was struck
blind to provision’s blindness, to how
A.E. Housman gathered by, mist-
eyes, perfect, rounded like coins.
I was afraid to spoil his Greekness,
those eyes which wept and flickered
lost time. They were real coins, I thought.
I guided him to the boat. He didn’t flip
the coins off his lids, but fading,
cried, “Mo, where, where have you been?”
I picked up his tears as he slipped
back to shore. When I looked back, I saw
the Malay house, calm in the recent storm.
Nicholas YH Wong is a recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award in 2008 and 2010. He studies Comparative Literature & Society at Columbia University and is working on his first poetry collection, Extinction Suite. His poems have appeared in The Rialto, Southeast Asian Review of English, and The Columbia Review, among others. The poems you read here were written during his Rimbun Dahan Artist Residency (Malaysia) in August 2008. He is currently a fellow at the beautiful La Muse (Languedoc, France), working on pieces about Cathar history, Occitan culture and troubadour verse.
For Angela Hijjas
It’s Tuesday again, a week since the last
real poem arrived. My desk pours with
books of plants, of distant islands and Wallace
the great scientist, not the poet, whom we’ve
room to hate. You’d come to hate this room too,
hate the difference between wearing a first
and last name, as if in you would creep ghost
questions of art and science – which will last
longer, which is much more useful with
mothers. My mum didn’t call me Wallace
but something better. In a poet still we’ve
hope for science. Not that sudden that too
evolution shone true and I threw up my first
feet, danced into old courtrooms. O ghost,
it’s dark where I drown. Among the last
of man, I am bound to vanishing forests with
my tail light avenging on. Animals love Wallace,
even the Malayan ones he’s found, and we’ve
been foreign to how out of print like books too
they’ll go. But it’s different, how they disappear first
into words, like poems when written become ghosts.
Maybe Wallace knew. That beauty in lines can last
longer than dots spread out like a nest with
thorns at the wrong places. O malarial Wallace,
to catalogue and much more, who but you we’ve
owed for survival of the fittest, that Darwin too
could be jealous – of the letters which – to be first
to find his name tarry, like a poisoned ghost.
I’m jealous. Of both your findings, the last
survived the beauty of my homeland, with
flying frogs and fierce beetles, and the Wallace
line marking the side I stood on, who we’ve
come from – the philosophical and the magical, or too,
the old and the new. Yet I am your descendent first,
walking around with a book, seeking a ghost.
I’d wished there was more to be said, to last
deeper than missing gaps in lines. Even with
new compasses, can I still find what Wallace
has drawn and recollect? Maybe it’s time we’ve
crossed further than he would’ve, could’ve too,
carry his vision in jars, call out to animals first
within the porous line, cuscus spotting a ghost.
At last, the white lady comes, crosses with
marsupials of time the kind Wallace we’ve
known: poet and artist too. Before the first
multitude comes the hybrid man.
House and Man
Recently, my friend acquired an old
house in Penang, to be dismantled,
moved to Pahang, by his beach
site, its “former colonial glory” restored.
I used to be a keeper of coins,
but now, of photographs, mainly
black and white. Though once at 7,
I made blueprints of a miniature house,
for 4000 ice cream sticks to be stacked
on glue, lighting the circumference
of windows faded away. Later,
adults told me that even living in a tree
house was against growing up,
against the territorial instincts of man.
I gave in to that, for the world understands.
I started writing too, and was brought
in front of Rumah Uda Manap, standing
to smell the dust of its former hosts,
to hear doors creak shut after
the silence of the azan, pretending
that man and his past have formed
a perfect union on stilts. Suddenly,
this Malay house came to be the grand
mannequin, standing for all others
I’ve not seen, as if those would not exist,
like the pictures in The Traditional Malay
House, where different ones from Perak,
Pahang, or Negeri Sembilan (all shored up
in faded print) were washed together
by some river, with words like beam,
wattlework wall, senggora tiles, tiang seri
(with a coin underneath) captioned off
by a reticulated python swimming.
The house had found its new home
on another shore, rooted and restored.
The coins, so I read, were older, kept
beneath their bases. I was no longer
a keeper of coins, so no one ran the risk
of pillars crumbling before the house did.
But such fidelity finds no fortune, when
in this country, money is tucked straight
into pockets, never underground.
Nor would things be better
if I drew the layout of each Malay
house with words. Sound descriptions,
heroic structures plied into a shape
poem, such buildings will still furrow
under the thick bends of a paper clip.
Each brick will still be unpicked
in an architect’s fallen dream, his forceps
falling from finger to fingerprint.
At the main house though, I could
sit on the edge of “steel and concrete,”
of the “traditional Malay timber
architecture,” where green thickets
of kemuning overlooked the Malay
houses that once could’ve been there.
Whether design had faith, I’d still lift
my hanging arms from the loft, test
my own sustainability. Since here,
I’ve had to force myself from dying
friendships, and the wild question that
loomed ahead: why protect the dead
house, like a dead friendship? Many
from the past have left, and others
too, have grown tired of stilted alliances,
ruled out living in this ugly country.
Yet I am here, walking on a “covered
loggia,” unsure of symbols, of what Rumah
Uda Manap behind me, restored, was
or is, a new world appraised by trees.
I believe earlier, I spoke of the friend
who acquired an old house. He had built
this place, Rimbun Dahan, and his wife
still acquires it by planting local species.
Praised for being “young” with “a sense
of place,” I wondered if guilt would leave
me scattered, old as the wind. Far out,
monkeys danced their seconds away.
I felt as if nature would swarm up
as I swooned over gardens and history –
stop fixing the watch I’d been wearing
since 10. Like a curse, I’m taken back
to Malacca and Penang. My chest had
drooped while the shops showed up
pitiful and shabby, until recently UNESCO
relented and stamped them with the glow
of a world heritage site. Once, I threw
a coin into Hang Li Po’s well. I was 9,
and I waited for its shadow to drop
past my reflection. The coin had quivered
down to the base, and so I returned,
at 17, for chendol and pineapple tarts.
Like all wishes, there was a sacrifice.
I had to leave behind a Renaissance
friend, and forestall the laughter of dumb
mansions. In Penang, the one who took
too many photos to Photoshop; he was next
to go. Do you not know? To protect
a friendship, never visit a dead house.
As for the end, what’s worth saving?
My symbol of coins is pared down,
and their metaphors run, simple
as heads and tails. Trying to keep
new coins, (flashpoint for modernity
in tradition), I worry that I’d hoard
the literal joke – to have more money
or not. The coin that fell from eternity
fell on my cheek. And I was struck
blind to provision’s blindness, to how
A.E. Housman gathered by, mist-
eyes, perfect, rounded like coins.
I was afraid to spoil his Greekness,
those eyes which wept and flickered
lost time. They were real coins, I thought.
I guided him to the boat. He didn’t flip
the coins off his lids, but fading,
cried, “Mo, where, where have you been?”
I picked up his tears as he slipped
back to shore. When I looked back, I saw
the Malay house, calm in the recent storm.
Nicholas YH Wong is a recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award in 2008 and 2010. He studies Comparative Literature & Society at Columbia University and is working on his first poetry collection, Extinction Suite. His poems have appeared in The Rialto, Southeast Asian Review of English, and The Columbia Review, among others. The poems you read here were written during his Rimbun Dahan Artist Residency (Malaysia) in August 2008. He is currently a fellow at the beautiful La Muse (Languedoc, France), working on pieces about Cathar history, Occitan culture and troubadour verse.
