Theophilus Kwek (b. 1994)

SELECTED POEMS

HO 213/926

‘Compulsory Repatriation of Undesirable Chinese Seamen, 1945-1946’

Other times it’s easy to turn out the light 
on the top step, and as it goes, 
see the shoes out of reach from the swing 
and rattle of the door, so undisturbed, 

yours like sentinels among the children’s. 
A late bus takes the corner, locked in speed,  
its long growl rising from the kerb to lift
it from itself, all sound, as if at this hour 

it is nothing else but an order of things—
with a common enough purpose—
that takes place, and throws its dead weight 
on the road dockside now becoming visible. 

*

If I’d gotten up they would’ve knocked me down. 
If I’d spoken up there would’ve been hell to pay. 
If I’d brought it up again I’d have lost my job. 
If I’d taken it up they wouldn’t let me stay. 

If I’d messed it up my wife would’ve kicked me out. 
If I’d played it up my friends would’ve had a go. 
If I’d given it up who would’ve told you so? 
If I’d made it up trust me you’d never know.   

*

Twice now, she says, he’s woken in pain.
Nothing will calm him. In the morning 
they’ll find a night ferry gone aground 
near Wallasey, not an hour before the boy 
cried out, and it’ll make her wonder. Sometimes 
she has the same dream she thinks he’s had, 
watchmen waking to the deadly dance of ships, 
trapped in their own tonnage, an unnamed sea—

sometimes it’s only a storm, which is kinder 
though the sound, when it happens, is the same. 
It takes all I’ve got to remind her she’s not 
alone, he was our friend too, nobody knows 
what happened. The boy’s seven, 
and my daughter goes to school with him. 

*

Past closing at the Stevedore. We knock 
back the years, talk gear and children,

plans for the house now that war is over. 
Next thing, light cracks across the floor 

and as the door flings wide Jim can’t 
stop them, though I’ve seen him take 

a body and throw it overboard. They’re looking 
for a man, this height, this face, anyone? 

The crowd parts, no questions. Then they’re on 
the street again, marching our man along 

with his head down, sorry for the trouble, 
if you’ll just come with us and no fuss now. 

Slowly we turn back to our drink.
In the near dark it could have been anyone. 

*

Light fog on the harbour, and the new ships 
gliding sweetly into place. Once, we lived 
for the peal that told us we’d come to dock, 

the hull still ringing for hours underfoot 
after finding its berth. These days the warehouse 
is an art museum, and the children tell me 

when there’s a show in town. I’d go if I could, 
though there’s no way to know if he won’t
be there too, spinning a fine yarn, or holding 

a glass to his ear—some trick he used to do—
all the better, he’d say, if you weren’t listening, 
all the better to hear the sea coming in.

My Grandfather Visits Pyongyang 

Too late, we find among his photographs 
a kingdom mostly dreamed of, 

its absurd architecture where 
he alighted sometime in October. 

Frame after frame resists comparison. 
There isn’t a place we’ve seen 

that stands as still, or with the same intent 
raises its glass towards heaven, 

all normalcy locked within a sound 
these pictures don’t contain—a pitch rung 

in the earth’s confines, too low 
for human hearing. Friends tell us to allow 

ourselves the time it takes
to grieve, or whatever brings us back 

to last year’s long continuum, 
but something stays the eye. How in some 

perspectives he’s already gone, 
gone from the boulevards where wide-crowned  

trees fill up the viewfinder, 
and men and women in work clothes hover

outside our field of vision. He’s 
somewhere else entirely, now close, 

now looking in, the disappearance 
nothing more than a trick of the lens, 

though we fall for it again and again. 
How like him, we think, 

then catch ourselves. The leaves turn 
on their own impulse in our hands.

Pulse

after Wang Gungwu

i.

Take this, the city's wrist. Blood thunders 
close to the surface, a curious blue 
where the washed river's lost its bolder hues.
Or this, soft hollow of its temple, 
where brushing past the first greying hairs one finds 
an ardent throb young enough to send 
a shiver down the spine. The method's simple: 
it matters where you press your fingers— 

no-one approaches the heart straight-on
(where currents mix) unless a life's at stake.
And at the thigh or even the crook 
of the arm even the best physicians 
might seek a vein in vain. Young scholar, be warned:
a pulse is not a voice, nor a voice a song. 

ii.

But what of these charts, these measurements 
of growth, these predictions and prognoses? 
Once premature, she's tallest in her class
by far, and now runs the quickest mile. 
(Some say it was in her stars at birth; taught well, 
a child can learn to prove even the most 
unlikely fate.) We scour these numbers 
for the luckiest traits, pray for portents 

of what might come of her when we are old 
and short of breath, and sight. Not what we know, 
or think we know, nor what we're told—
though we will not hear when others tell us so.
It's hard enough to read the heart's direction. 
What's buried here is more than circulation. 

by Theophilus Kwek
first published in Moving House (2020, Carcanet)

 

SELECTED POEMS: “Corridor” >