Excerpt from Nocturnes and Bagatelles, by Wong Phui Nam

X

Rummaging among my thoughts I went down their steps 
to the cellar with a bundle of words 
as matches to throw up areas of light upon the clammy walls,
and I left my shadow at the door, substanceless, unheard.

Here were the tangles of my childhood - half-dreams 
propelled, lifting the trap-door off my heart, 
me on the violence of the garden swing -
twitching like half-torn snakes, buried in part.

It seemed, from the light where bushes felt really green 
with the familiar air of a well-off merchant,
I have been summoned by unformed voices I left behind 
to come to the cellar to set my house in order

to rationalise in neat parcels, the sky 
that turned like a bald face over the circular garden-walk 
over the child on the swing who gave his orang-outang 
identity, its irrational leer behind bougainvillea stalks.