The Planners - Boey Kim Cheng

They plan. They build. All spaces are gridded,
filled with permutations of possibilities.
The buildings are in alignment with the roads
which meet at desired points
linked by bridges all hang

in the grace of mathematics.
They build and will not stop.
Even the sea draws back
and the skies surrender.
They erase the flaws,

the blemishes of the past, knock off
useless blocks with dental dexterity.
All gaps are plugged
with gleaming gold.
The country wears perfect rows

of shining teeth.

Anaesthesia, amnesia, hypnosis.
They have the means.
They have it all so it will not hurt,
so history is new again.

The piling will not stop.
The drilling goes right through
the fossils of last century.
But my heart would not bleed
poetry. Not a single drop

to stain the blueprint
of our past’s tomorrow.

Seventh Month – Cyril Wong

August: time of death, a path opens
to the past like a wind through grass,

the way lit by sparks, flaming paper.

Yet rituals only displace our desire
to mourn. Let us remember the dead,

but more importantly, persuade them
to ensure no harm may visit us.

We leave a row of chairs for the ghosts
to take our places for just one night.

Wayang actors hide their exhaustion
behind painted faces, dusty cymbals

trailing the bright arc of their voices.

We think how the dead would take this –
foibles of a life sung by archetypes,

reduced to grave, inflated gestures.

Would they grumble to each other
in their seats, complain of a lack

of synchronism between the music
and the action, the noise of traffic

eating into their illusion of narrative?

When it is finally over, would they
linger to gossip amongst themselves

about those who moved on to the life
to follow, sighing upon the mention

of the ones who have chosen to stay?

Past Midnight – Boey Kim Cheng

I turn the light on to see if i am still there
the bulb creeps to life, resentful
at being roused to work. The dreary repertoire
which a discordant band went through a dozen times
during a neighbour's funeral, is stomping
in my head. I hum a classical tune, summon
the words of a sentimental song
to expel the stubborn band. The blaring trumpets
cut them down with a single blow

Life is perpetual unrest
inthe housing estates. the endless knockings
the stampeding feet, the hurricanes of bad temper,
the eternal television, the thrashing bodies,
the endless rituals of life and death
where is the point of stillness
mature art directs us to?
my mind veers crazily.
i turn the light off.
the bulb goes on burning inside.

The Jaguar By Ted Hughes

The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.

The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut

Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.

Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion

Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor’s coil

Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or

Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.

It might be painted on a nursery wall.

But who runs like the rest past these arrives

At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,

As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged

Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes

On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom—

The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,

By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear—

He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him

More than to the visionary his cell:

His stride is wildernesses of freedom:

The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.

Over the cage floor the horizons come.