by
Cherlyn Lee Suet Yean

I am a Junior College  student who loves history and writing poetry. To me, history is a grand story  with so many interesting details waiting to be discovered. In my free time, I love taking long walks  around Singapore, letting my feet absorb the atmosphere of different places. I learn so much about  Singapore’s history that way.

Naturally, I am interested in Bukit Brown because it is full of history. In fact, I went there earlier this year. But amidst all the tombstones, there was one that held a special resonance for me—the tombstone of Khoo Seok Wan. He was a poet and a scholar, and his life story is particularly fascinating because it contains all the vicissitudes of life.

I became interested in visiting Khoo’s tombstone after I attended an excellent exhibition on him at the National Library. He was born rich but became poor, and died of leprosy. But what really struck me was the beauty and immediacy of his poems, written in classical Chinese style. He is refreshingly honest about his poverty, and his poems chronicle details of his daily life very poignantly.

I suppose I was also was able to identify because I write poetry.  I enjoy writing poetry because I get to express myself, and it is a way to channel my emotions. So I decided to visit Khoo’s grave as a  pilgrimage to seek inspiration, and to pay homage to a great poet.

For me, the poem of his that I loved most was “Reflections on Building my Grave”. It is by an immigrant who has reconciled himself to the fact that there is no return to the motherland, and his characteristic honesty (with himself) can be seen. He also reconciles himself to inevitable change, and the line “年年新綠到天南“, as much as it describes how grass will grow yearly around his grave, is a statement that accepts change. This is particularly fitting given the change that is happening now, with a road being constructed through Bukit Brown.

In fact, I recited this poem by his tombstone because it felt right to do so, like completing life’s cycle. In his acceptance of dying in a foreign land that has become home, there is perhaps a larger acceptance of change. Given that the highway will be constructed through his tomb, it is perhaps a way of sending him to his final rest. And this is fitting because of the way he stoically endured through the vicissitudes of life with courage and dignity.

This is my tribute to Khoo Seok Wan:

Visiting Khoo Seok Wan’s Grave 

As I enter, a tripod covered with verdigris promises
That if I pause long enough, its invisible
Camera will capture me against a hill of tombs.
This afterimage will bewilder passing cars.

At Khoo’s burial mound I recite
“Reflections on building my grave”.
Translated, its crow-squawked syllables
Hover in the somnolent air. A creased map
Guided me here, amid the river of red
Inscriptions I cannot read.

The highway blueprint that sent in
An army of excavators must have been
A summons from the dead. Otherwise I
Would not have come to you
With a broom and a book of your poems.

  “Reflections on Building my Grave” by Khoo Seok Wan 

(translated by Shelly Bryant from the NLB exhibition)

in sea and on hills

little space even for my abode

how then may these buried bones

leap over the Sword Pond

even were you to call a third time

I will have no hope of rising

from Singapura’s soil [Xing zhou]

when I fall, at last, into repose

a petal brushes my headstone –

another butterfly repeats life’s circle

yet even in these grave markers

styles alter with time

like grass growing anew

in its season

with each passing year

changes again touch

our southern home

The inscription at the tomb of Khoo Seok Wan (Photo: Claire Leow)

Khoo Seok Wan’s Tomb (photo Khoo Ee Hoon)

Editor’s note: Khoo Seok Wan was exhumed on 12 March 2014, with his grandson and his great grandsons in attendance.