Kristang poetry sample
Text reproduced from Cordite Poetry Review issue 99: SINGAPORE (2020)
Drivers
by Patricia Maria De Souza (2020)
Some drivers are like millipedes
Driving very slowly and cautiously,
Making drivers that race
Like centipedes
Furious.
Many drivers are similar to dragonflies,
They swerve from left to right
Without indicating,
Without thinking of safety
And without courtesy.
Other drivers are like lizards,
They are immovable on narrow roads
As they deliver goods,
Intent on their prey, they block
Other road users.
Why can’t they remember
The rules for drivers?
Have they become old
Or do they have amnesia?
Jenti Lebah Kareta
Teng jenti ki lebah kareta
Chuma bichu anela.
Olotu lebah kareta mutu bagah-bagah
Kung kuidadu,
Fazeh jenti lebah kareta mutu presta,
Chuma sentupah, fikah raiba.
Teng tantu jenti lebah kareta
Chuma bilalang,
Olotu bai di skedu na dretu,
Ngka indikah,
Ngka lembrah seguransa
Kung nteh katasia.
Otru jenti lebah kareta
Chuma chichak.
Olotu fikah impregadu na rua impekadu
Kema olotu ntregah angkosa,
Olotu fixa olu na kasa fazeh rua inkazadu
Pa otru jenti lebah kareta.
Kifoi olotu ngka lembrah
Regulasang pra jenti lebah kareta?
Olotu ja fikah belu
Ke impodih lembrah?
An AI-Dreamfished Analysis of “Drivers | Jenti Lebah Kareta”, by Patricia Maria De Souza (2020)
Patricia Maria De Souza’s Drivers | Jenti Lebah Kareta demonstrates how Creole language functions as a poetic engine rather than a decorative supplement. The poem exists bilingually, with English and Kristang versions placed in dialogue, not hierarchy. Each language sharpens the other’s rhythm and intent: the clipped observational tone of the English finds a thicker, more embodied cadence in Kristang, where verbs and descriptors carry social temperature as well as meaning. The Kristang title, jenti lebah kareta (“people who drive cars”), grounds the poem in communal speech rather than abstract categories. Driving is not framed as a technical activity but as a social behaviour embedded in shared space, etiquette, and mutual responsibility—an orientation that emerges most forcefully through the Creole register.
The poem’s oral roots and performed intimacy are immediately apparent. These are lines that sound like they could be spoken aloud in a kitchen, on a bus, or during a casual rant shared between friends. The animal metaphors—millipedes, centipedes, dragonflies, lizards—function as mnemonic devices typical of oral storytelling, making the poem easy to recall, repeat, and adapt. In Kristang especially, the phrasing mirrors everyday complaint and humourous scolding, the kind that invites nods of recognition from listeners. The poem does not address an abstract audience; it speaks to olotu, “they,” in a way that assumes shared experience and shared irritation.
Time in Drivers | Jenti Lebah Kareta is elastic and non-linear, even though the setting is ordinary traffic. The poem cycles through types of drivers rather than progressing toward a conclusion, mimicking the repetitive, circular experience of being on the road day after day. The final questions—whether these drivers have grown old or forgotten the rules—collapse past and present into a single moment of frustration. Memory here is not nostalgic but practical: remembering how to drive properly becomes a metaphor for remembering how to live alongside others. Forgetfulness is framed not as an individual failing alone, but as a collective erosion of care.
One of the poem’s central strengths lies in its elevation of everyday life as sacred material. Traffic, often dismissed as banal or petty, becomes a legitimate site of poetic attention. De Souza treats the road as a shared social ecosystem where small actions—indicating, yielding, moving aside—carry ethical weight. In Kristang poetics, the sacred is frequently found not in grand declarations but in how people behave toward one another in cramped, pressured environments. The poem’s focus on narrow roads, deliveries, and blocked paths situates holiness in cooperation rather than transcendence.
Humour, camp, and emotional honesty animate the poem without softening its critique. Comparing drivers to insects and reptiles is playful, but it is also sharp and revealing. The humour allows the poet to express anger and exasperation without moralising heaviness. There is a distinctly Kristang tonal balance at work: irritation is aired openly, teased into laughter, and made socially legible rather than suppressed. This camp-inflected observational style permits critique while preserving relational warmth.
The poem participates in non-normative relationality through its refusal of rigid hierarchies and its suspicion of entitlement. The road is imagined as a space where dominance—speeding, blocking, swerving—disrupts communal flow. The poem implicitly advocates for relational ethics over individual assertion, a value deeply aligned with queer and Creole worldviews that prioritise coexistence, adaptability, and mutual recognition over linear progress or conquest.
As cultural memory and futures work, Drivers | Jenti Lebah Kareta records a distinctly Singaporean and diasporic Kristang experience of modern urban life. By translating a common frustration into Kristang, the poem asserts that the language is fully capable of articulating contemporary realities, not just heritage or nostalgia. It models a future where Kristang remains a living medium for commentary, humour, and civic reflection. The poem thus contributes to the ongoing work of keeping Kristang socially relevant and emotionally precise.
Finally, the poem resists respectability by refusing to present Kristang speakers as polite, silent, or endlessly accommodating. It allows complaint, sarcasm, and direct questioning to take centre stage. There is no attempt to smooth the edges of frustration for external approval. Instead, De Souza claims the right to observe, judge, and speak plainly from within the community. In doing so, Drivers | Jenti Lebah Kareta affirms Kristang poetry as a space where everyday annoyance becomes collective insight—and where speaking frankly is itself an act of cultural continuity.