Young Singaporean Protopolyglot at His Desk
Kevin Martens Wong
He starts at first light, despite having read
half of Don Quixote just before bed. Hear
his scratching pen on paper as he writes
я говорю по-русски1. Or, “I speak
Russian”. These few words, of course, are child’s play
for any six-year-old in Moscow; but dreams
of reciting Dostoyevsky (dream
on, his mother had said), and hearing the Red
Square come alive soar through his mind’s eye. To play
such tricks is dangerous; he can still hear
the dry voice of el hidalgo, speaking
through the Cyrillic. Yet onward he writes.
Later, like in some half-remembered rite,
he will conjugate, as if in a dream
Hungarian transitive verbs. He will speak
in Magyar to, well, the air (here you read:
no one) and in strange doublespeak; you hear
beszélek angolul; but ’tis a play
of one — for who here uses this tongue for play?
Much less for work, or to read, to sing or write;
These strange, harsh words are a world away from here.
This island has wrought a cold, iron dream
With four, just four ways to officially read
out pronouncements in quadruplespeak.
Russian, Hungarian, Spanish; his friends speak
Swahili, German, but he only plays
with these, for now. (He could never read
Chinese.) Does it matter to him if he’s right
when he speaks, if he’s really learned to dream
in Deutsch? Нет2; all he wants is for his heart
to be free of these five steel stars, to hear
Freedom as it is really said;
to speak of unremembered, groundless dreams;
to sing records unrecorded, to play
games without rules. To think, and write
in a language untainted, unread.
Words disguise the dream, for to dare play
with fire is to speak in tongues all too right.
He writes on, here, alone, pen at the ready.
~
Kevin Martens Wong is a final year linguistics major at the National University of Singapore, the editor-in-chief of Unravel: The Accessible Linguistics Magazine, and the Kabesa of the Kodrah Kristang revitalisation initiative, which seeks to revive the critically endangered Kristang language in Singapore. He loves books, boo boos, bicycles, languages, science fiction, most marine mammals, and the color orange. His first novel, Altered Straits, will be published by Epigram Books in early 2017.
Jorel Chan is a Singaporean who has read philosophy, politics and economics in the UK and is currently pursuing his masters in international relations in Tokyo, Japan. He is also a humanitarian photographer whose photo-book regarding the refugee crisis in Fukushima will be published this coming year. He attempts to write on the side and has providentially been published in various literary magazines across UK and Singapore. For possible humanitarian, photographic or literary project collaborations, please feel free to contact him at jorel.chan@gmail.com.
