Pudu; An Epitaph.

This one was back when they announced that Pudu Jail is going to be demolished. I do not know why its sitting in the drafts folder.


A hundred and score years she stood
The grand old lady,
of Sorrow some said and Redemption for others

Out of English sense of right and wrong it came
of foreign bricks upon conquereds land was she built
A sign of might, a statement building,
A gaol.

Many came in, many left
But some never walked out again
Strung up, when the Law pronounced them condemned

Dead man walking, they say.

For those who left,
Through the same iron doors they first came through
When the Law deemed them reformed,
but Society is often the harshest Judge
For those who walked out are never truly free,
Forever they bore the invisible mark all can see,
that once a convict, always a convict.

Time pass by,
Convicts came, convicts left, convicts died
But still she stood,
amongst the maddening pace of progress
The old lady of Pudu


Alas,
She herself stands condemned,
Greed her hangman
The noose, our ignorance.

Oh i curse the powers that be
Who sold our past for a pot of gold
For is it our way to erase history and to kill the old?

I pity our children, and their children's children
Who could not forget what they never learned
Who cannot know what they never saw at all
That there was once an old prison in Pudu
and we sold it all for a mall. 


In memory of our another demolished past,
1895-2010