Alfian Sa’at is a resident playwright with Wild Rice. His published works include two collections of poetry _One Fierce Hour_ and _A History of Amnesia_, two collections of short stories _Corridor_ and _Malay Sketches_, as well as two collections of plays. In 2001, he won the Golden Point Award for Poetry and received the Young Artist Award. Alfian has been nominated six times for Best Script at the Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards, eventually winning in 2005 for his play, ‘Landmarks’, and in 2010 for his play, ‘Nadirah’. Intro: The poem that I am going to read is called “The Merlion” and it came out in my first collection of poetry called _One Face Hour_ in 1998. I wrote this poem basically as a response to other poems that have been written about the merlion notably by the poet Edwin Thumboo, who wrote “Ulysses by the Merlion” and then Dr Lee Tzu Pheng who also wrote “The Merlion to the Ulysses”. So this happens to be my own response and of course in Singapore there has been a rash of Merlion poems. It seems to be a certain kind of a rite of passage to write about the Merlion if you are a Singapore poet worth his or her salt. The Merlion by Alfian Sa’at "I wish it had paws," you said, "It's quite grotesque the way it is, you know, limbless; can you imagine it writhing in the water, like some post-Chernobyl nightmare? I mean, how does it move? Like a torpedo? Or does it shoulder itself against the currents, gnashing with frustration, its furious mane bleached the colour of a drowned sun? But take a second look at it, how it is poised so terrestrially, marooned on this rough shore, as if unsure of its rightful harbour. Could it be that, having taken to this unaccustomed limpidity, it has decided to abandon the seaweed-haunted depths for land? Perhaps it is even ashamed (But what a bold front!) to have been a creature of the sea; look at how it tries to purge itself of its aquatic ancestry, in this ceaseless torrent of denial, draining the body of rivers of histories, lymphatic memories. What a riddle, this lesser brother of the Sphinx. What sibling polarity, how its sister's lips are sealed with self-knowledge and how its own jaws clamp open in self-doubt, still surprised after all these years." "Yet...what brand new sun can dry the iridescent slime from the scales and what fresh rain wash the sting of salt from those chalk-blind eyes?" A pause. "And why does it keep spewing that way? I mean, you know, I mean..." "I know exactly what you mean," I said, Eyeing the blond highlights in your black hair And your blue lenses the shadow of a foreign sky. It spews continually if only to ruffle its own reflection in the water; such reminders will only scare a creature so eager to reinvent itself." Another pause. "Yes," you finally replied, in that acquired accent of yours, "Well, yes, but I still do wish it had paws."