Stranger on Earth

Sleepless It’s only late at night, When the minutes are protracted That the fears hidden by daylight - The fear of dilapidation, of irreducible pain, Of loneliness and all things terminal – Drop their masks and reveal the ugliness Of Truth; that for the single man There is no truth other than That all paths lead to the eternal forest - So achingly green and familiarly dark – Where all living things retreat and wait For the certain final hour. It’s only late at night, When Silence has reclaimed its purity, That the echoes of bygone eras return, Droning regrets and protestations never-ending, Cyclical disappointments, looping heartbreaks, Rhythmic reiterations of ‘Never again!’, ‘Today is the first day…,’ and ‘Worthy I am.’ All conviction since lost, drowned in The underworld stream of mass indifference, The hungry maelstrom devouring dreams Of every manchild ever dared to Outwear the insignia of innocence. But when daylight comes...

When they say there are no certainties in life, they are being pessimistic (or they are lying). You can always depend on the permanence of the fissures in the plastered wall, or the deep-blue of the impassive ocean, where matter slides into the irredeemable.  2009

Almost half a lifetime went by between the compositions of “When You Are Old” and “Politics,” and yet it is startlingly clear from the diction of both poems that their writer, whose focus might have shifted from the personal to the political, was as preoccupied with the subject of (lost) youth in his last days as when he was in his thirties.   When You Are Old (from The Rose , 1893) When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. In “When You Are Old,” the speaker is addressing a wo...

In the nine “Voices” poems (“Die Stemmen,” 1902), we find Rilke speaking out for those who have suffered pain and injustice. He insists that in order for them to be heard, they need to “advertise” themselves, and this should be done through singing, or songs – like the castrati (referred to as “these cut ones”) who sing to God and compel him to stay and listen. This message is found in the “Title Leaf” – an introduction of sorts to the nine songs. It is tempting to read the nine songs (“Beggar’s,” “Blind Man’s,” “Drunkard’s,” “Suicide’s,” “Widow’s,” “Idiot’s,” “Orphan Girl’s,” “Dwarf’s,” “Leper’s”) as a collection of poetic pleas for social awareness. This is due to Rilke’s “casting choices”; he has selected society’s most conspicuous outcasts as the main speakers of his poems. When, for instance, the beggar in “The Beggar’s Song” says, “I go always from door to door/rain-soaked and sun-scorched,” we are induced to sympathise with his downtrodden fate. The same can be said for...

Inspiration, as most artists already know, is that rare glimmer that shines at the most random of moments. It is elusiveness personified, utterly indifferent to your summoning and pleading. “Writer’s block,” that is what we modern-day writers call it when it refuses to obey our wishes, leaving us high and dry while the clock is ticking away deep into the night. Classic poets John Keats and Rainer Maria Rilke show us what needs to be done if one is to be inspired. In Keats’ celebrated “Ode to Psyche,” we find the speaker singing the praise of Psyche because she is the “latest born and fairest vision far/Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!” Psyche’s beauty is so astonishing that even Eros, sent by Aphrodite out of sheer jealousy to punish her, injured himself with his love arrow and fell head over heels for her. However, Keats says Psyche, despite her earth-shattering beauty, is without her worshippers: “though temple thou hast none/Nor altar heap'd with flowers/Nor virgin-cho...

This is a comparative piece I wrote way back in 2008, when I had just arrived in Kuala Lumpur and seen Fincher's film. At the time I was also teaching Cummings, and it had instantly struck me that the film and the poem had a lot in common. Though I discovered later that the poem could have a different interpretation from the one I have given below, the comparison still stands. The full poem can be found here: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15403 Tentative answer: More than half a century separates the publication of "anyone lived in a pretty how town" (1940) and the release of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), starring the incomparable Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. The former is a maddeningly unorthodox poem that makes linguistic purists wince; the latter is a wildly imaginative portrait of a man whose life defies linearity. Neither the poem nor the film appeals to those who have been conditioned to think that life comes in easily ...

A poem of mine published in the literary magazine "International Gallerie" Painting by my artist friend Tang Yeok Khang As I lay me down to sleep in the cradle of the Valley of Ashes, images of concrete in my mind do seep. Muscular modern structures rising from marshes stare me down like steely, stolid gods, paying no heed to my scarred wishes. Men in grey-black suits shuffle in hordes through the streets paved with cruel tar, the cogs of their minds turning by rusty rote. In this alien kingdom nothing rules like cars, which line up orderly bumper to bumper from the cracked pavement to the dying stars. Now up in the smoky air I hunger-linger, waiting to chance upon a crystal piece of sky, where dreams and wishes inspire wonder. The sun breaks through and a window strikes. The world ignites as on the seventh day, when Man himself was still god-like. In a garden dressed in the purity of May, He strolls in the mi...