Resource contributed by: Alfian Sa’at

Alfian Sa’at, One Fierce Hour (Singapore: Landmark Books, c1998).

The Last Kampung

Everybody heard that pause
in the middle of the azan
when the muezzin tried
to recover his voice.

It was easy to imagine
cocks crooning mournful,
cats becoming more affectionate,
trees throwing their shadows
at earlier hours,
lost birds, a new map in the sky-

as if everything knew.

One last look
as rooms reclaimed their echoes:
at trees unmarked by the number
of times they have borne fruit,
at muddy alleys criss-crossed by
the prints of many-sized Japanese slippers,
at neighbours, masseurs, bread-sellers,
healers, gossips, debtors…

What is there
to look forward to
but nostalgia?

On the last evening in the last kampung
a mother rocked her baby
in the embryo of its buaian
singing it lullabies over and over
for fear the child would forget.

The well has already forgotten.
Its stupefied mouth gapes wide,
as if in the middle of a sentence,

speechless with the memory of a drowned moon.

*azan: Muslim prayer call
*buaian: sarong cradle suspended from ceiling