Lunch Break - "Restaurant"
“Lunch Break” is a monthly poetry column by LIM Xin Hwee, appearing every fourth Friday of the month. Look for insightful appreciations of contemporary poems from around the world. Sign up for notifications here.
How do we write about something we can barely remember? Is it still a viable memory if you only remember the location and not what happened, or the emotions that came with it? These are just some of the questions Cyril Wong’s poem ‘Restaurant’ poses.
Restaurant
By Cyril Wong
First, an object, or a place,
then the rest of it. But what happens
to a feeling when the memory
from which it sprang
is vanishing? The difficulty, at present,
is in the particulars; the restaurant,
its name, the location, still clear;
but the food on a table widening
between us—what did we eat again?
And what was said? Or was there
just a long silence amplified by banal
questions: favourite movies,
current profession, boyfriend?
What was missing: deeper
interest; a willingness to enjoy
the company; or just a question
about the lessons of a solitary life
that could turn it all around,
leading to friendship, even tenderness.
So what’s lost that I fail to recall;
much less a tragedy than I need it
to be? What remains: a gap in the mind,
the shattered echo of a possibility;
less than a feeling now, then not even that.
There’s an irony within the poem that stems from the fact that the speculations by the speaker are clearer and more precise than the retrievable details of the memory. The speaker remembers clearly the specifics regarding the restaurant, but cleverly keeps them away from the reader. For example, the speaker concedes: “the restaurant, / its name, the location, still clear” but later is left wondering what happened in that particular memory: “was there / just a long silence amplified by banal / questions: favourite movies, / current profession, boyfriend?” The details surrounding the conversation and the other person involved are what evades the speaker, but the specificity of the possible conversation topics attest to the desperation of the speaker who, when given the chance, endeavours to remember these things about the other person. It impresses on the reader that the writing of this poem to some extent facilitates memory; the language itself remembers for the speaker what the speaker forgot.
The speaker’s attempt at reconstructing the other person’s details is wistful, yet later the poem denies the status of wistfulness as emotion. Treating the memory almost clinically, the speaker lists potential reasons for his forgetfulness: “What was missing: deeper / interest; a willingness to enjoy / the company”. To try to come up with justifications for an interaction that did not go far enough in the speaker’s eyes demonstrates personal responsibility on his part. The speaker also asks: “So what’s lost that I fail to recall; / much less a tragedy than I need it / to be?” To need the memory to be more of a tragedy indicates a desire for closure, to have something go so awry that the termination of it makes sense. Here, the wistfulness has no good reason to exist. There was no big tussle, just two people at a restaurant keenly aware of a lack of chemistry between them.
The poem asks many questions. From intensely philosophical questions (“But what happens / to a feeling when the memory / from which it sprang / is vanishing?”) to seemingly banal ones (“favourite movies, / current profession, boyfriend?”), the speaker appears insistent on the project of finding out more. The only two sentences that are not posed as questions (“What was missing: […]”, “What remains: […]”) are part of an attempt by the speaker to compartmentalize what they have and what they do not, which ultimately cannot answer his questions. Ironically, the speaker wishes he had asked even more questions (“What was missing: […] just a question about the lessons of a solitary life”) in his attempt to answer his own question. This highlights the inadequacy of hard knowledge, as it is shown that the speaker will never be satisfied. The questions, therefore, not only reveals a lack of closure in that interaction between the speaker and his addressee, but also demonstrates the speaker’s insatiable curiosity.
The gist of Cyril Wong’s poem is at the ending, which is enigmatic. The reader is many times removed from the memory, much like the speaker, trying to imagine a “shattered echo of a possibility” – one that exists in the past. The imperfect, “shattered” nature of this memory is what “remains”, but because it is intangible (“echo”, “possibility”), can it be said to have taken up space? The speaker tries to accord it presence in his life but cannot even place it, and struggles. This difficulty is something that I am familiar with – once, I walked past a quiet nook on my university campus and vaguely remembered whom I was with: someone I am no longer in touch with. There I was, confronted with the existence of the nook, untouched except by daylight – not the way I remembered it. This person would be twelve hours behind, in nighttime, thousands of miles away from this nook. I wondered to myself, “What happened while we were here? Do they ever think about this nook at night?” and found that the questions were more meaningful than the memory itself, because I had caught myself imagining possible trajectories. The question revealed more about me and what I held dear, than about the memory or the other person.
The poem ‘Restaurant’ by Cyril Wong appears in his poetry collection The Lover’s Inventory (2015). As the title of the collection suggests, Wong writes about objects, places, sensations, and other memorabilia that might appear in a lover’s inventory. As a poem, ‘Restaurant’ provides a great contrast to the other poems, which are rooted in things that remind the speaker of a particular feeling. Here, the restaurant consumes the speaker, and reminds him of a feeling that is fading, a memory that cannot be inventoried.
The poem ‘Restaurant’ is from The Lover’s Inventory, by Cyril Wong (Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2015). The poem is reproduced by permission of publisher.
LIM Xin Hwee has a keen interest in language and how people use it. A member of the writing collective /s@ber, she has written many things, important and unimportant. She graduated from NTU with a degree in English and Linguistics.
If you’ve enjoyed reading this article, please consider making a donation. Your donation goes towards paying our contributors and a modest stipend to our editors. Singapore Unbound is powered by volunteers, and we depend on individual supporters. To maintain our independence, we do not seek or accept direct funding from any government.