November

Adrian Loh

It rained a lot that November, swells and crashes

all around him, frantic and nearly devoid
of breathing space.
Amidst telecasts of bankrupt democracies
and burning tourist landmarks:
a rebirth of wonder. The news resounded
as we danced and prayed together,
knelt before the withered altars
of a new world order, chanting
holy incantations of “Oh well, whatever, nevermind.”

“In ten years, I’ll just be another chapter

about a girl you knew once
and how you almost became a father.”

“In ten years, you just might be

the love of my life.”

It consists of things, “a series of flashbacks”

as one would say. So vivid I can barely recall
the shreds of light in that hollow cathedral
pregnant with laughter and forgetting.
A history of systematic longing.
Yet another oversold tale of the absent father
and the indifferent Creator.
Get them while stocks lasts!
Between Friday prayers and Sunday worship,
between fractures and talk
of how everything breaks
and nothing makes sense anymore
and every thing is so fucked up.

I wonder if we are freed

from the velocities of youth. If we are ever freed
from those sullen conversations of the one that got away,
or the one we were going to be married to some day.
From dreams we awoke,
shivered and wept till dawn
and morning prayers, I wonder
whether time has let subside
those great visions and revisions, whether time has made us
abide.
 “Nothing of this world is ever really
worth building,” he said, “no becoming that doesn’t instigate
our unbecoming.” November
left us warm and empty, nestled in the valley of creation,
in the eye of storms. We stumbled out
into the burning city, into the shivering hollow
of ambition and at every turning
I was afraid, that you had taken nothing
and left nothing.

I remember those seasons of night and our voices speaking,

whispering memory and sweet nothings (this voice
that has ever only known itself speaking to you).
As the rain fell past midnight, I listened
to conversation subside
into the monosyllabic slur of an Alzheimer’s patient
clutching to that very last song
of youth. I followed
that absent-minded trail of discarded articles
of clothing and lost hope,
towards the winter bedroom...

I lie here
awake, in this bed
of memories. Awake,
in this eternal chamber of echoes.

It was the season of light and remorse.

“I come bearing gifts,” I said,
and the stories of my grandchildren.
I bring with me their birth rites,
their marriage vows and insurance policies.
Their genetic memory forged
from my convulsive follies.
I listened, as conversations subside
(I should have said these things to you then,
but one hardly ever gets around to such things).
Silently we gazed out, upon that receding coastline
where everything that once was is no more.
“Your generation,” he said, “has been given the chance
to undo and redo everything that has come before.”
I finished what remained of the whisky and
ordered another one.

All around me the incantations swelled:

last call for one more round and a new world order,
last call to repent, and to understand
how it all might have been,
how we were given a chance
and other such vague generalizations —
each more profound with every pint.

Somewhere in the distance

the bartender pours the last shot,
a man on his phone dials an ex-lover:
“Darling, I want you back,” but
no one answers on the other end. Then
“Here’s what we’re doing about global warming,”
someone says, but I can’t hear them over
the sound of the rain, and the ice breaking.

Kuala Lumpur, December 2008