Lee Tzu Pheng (b. 1946)
SELECTED POEMS
Lambada by Galilee
i
They are doing the lambada
by the Sea of Galilee,
the singing and the noise
blasting up the promenade
to the Quiet Beach Hotel,
where I am trying to understand
this great event, of being here,
where paralytic, demoniac and blind
found peace at the quiet word
of a wandering miracle-man.Far from paralyzed these revellers,
though demoniac may well describe the scene;
the women, barely visible from my room but
visibly bare, are treading invisible water,
their drowning gestures more than a sign
of the unfinished work of the Nazarene.
The band is celebrating a new Tiberian glory,
beating up a frenzy of maudlin worship
of love, of peace, shaloms of nostalgic agony,
and a new Herodias bawls her strange love protest:
"Y're drivin' me crazy!"And indeed she is driving me crazy,
and those of us who thought
to find quiet in the land of Galilee.ii
I feel unredeemed tonight,
confused by this un Galilean turmoil,
the mind horridly agape (not agape)
at the undeniable lure of these sensual songs.
I do not know if this silly sympathy
is thwarted expectation asking more,
or simply the reluctant recognition
that these lambada lovers,
so much more present to the present,
would have been warmly welcome
at that love-feast, and
the host himself seen us as pharisaical.
by Lee Tzu Pheng
from Lambada by Galilee & Other Surprises (1997)
