Legion of Mary
for Wei-Shan


Kneeling in front of you, feeling
that familiar ache or uneasiness

of straddling a pulchritude
both sentient and sublime

(because a member next to you
has just appeared in a pair of shorts),

and looking at you standing on top
of the world with a briar of serpents

under your feet, I’ve often wondered why
a small of group of teenage boys

would gather Saturday after Saturday
to say the rosary amongst themselves

and report good deeds done the past week
and still not seek any kind of reward

but for your abstract approval,
O Lady of Perpetual Assistance?

Unconsoled Spaces
for AC


In a cousin’s home in Melbourne:
Sophie von Otter’s voice is heard
from across the living room,
singing songs about re-discovering
unconsoled spaces from the past.

Then a wintry sun catches suddenly
a glimpse of the breakfast table.
There’s fire in my teacup, its rim’s aflame,
and my first brew for the morning
is all aglow. Then silence can be heard

and motionless objects in the kitchen
can be seen moving as if possessed
by some undisclosed energy,
as if conceiving of a new focal centre.
The kettle on the stove moves

in opposite angles to the sun and
the Alessi sugar bowl is overcome
with distraction. A spoon on the table
hovers in mid air. But they have
moved on (just like you have),

without having to ponder
a sense of right and wrong,
now being so sure of mind,
undisturbed and uncaressed,
and with no prolonged goodbyes.


___________________________
Some of my best memories of Melbourne centre around my cousin’s dining table in his home off Brunswick Street. I used to love to sit at that table to read the morning papers while having breakfast. And sometimes I would dream about strange things like ex-boyfriends and men who used to woo me in my youth. “AC” is one of them.

The Thought of an Acceptance
(Diary: 27.8.89)
to AH


All night I dreamt of you:
a map was given to me like the geography
we deciphered at school leading to where
you live, and I wanted to follow you home.
But something didn’t seem quite right at the time.

That gleam I’ve remembered each time
you are mentioned lost within a look
anxiously vague and diffident, yet cautiously
intent on a thing I hear you still continue
to yearn and yearn for, sometimes even
at the thought of an acceptance.

Like me, I feel you already know
what no amount of evasion can erase —
how I write, and write, always lost
in this search for identity, of being myself,
and although mostly dissatisfied, for now
I think is enough for me — Life is delusion.
Can we ever pretend it to be otherwise?


____________________________
This 16 year old piece was dreamt about in secondary school and set to words later at varsity. I've often wondered what's become of the person mentioned in the poem. I do hope he’s come to terms with being himself.

Simpang
Canterbury 5.7.2004


Of all the words I remember of the two languages
closest to my heart, I think it is the word Simpang

that has continued to endear itself to me:
Simpang Renggam, that small town where

two train tracks met, one of the many towns
I learnt about of the geography of my country

from my father’s car window. Later, simpang hati
took on a more nebulous meaning than when

it was first learnt and affirmed — strange junctures
of the heart no textbook could ever reveal.

Freely from Su Tung Po


A soft evening breeze has filled
the room with incense and begonias.
Moonbeams, thick as chalk-dust,
have made their way through the bamboo blinds.

The boy I have just met has fallen asleep.
Nervously, I light a perfumed candle
and hold within my gaze his naked beauty.


___________________________________
I inherited quite a few books from a colleague who retired in the late 90s. In one poetry anthology I came across a version of this poem complete with a few lines she pencilled in. The notes were, I think, written in bed with her husband. If memory serves me well, the last line of my poem is a direct reworking of hers.

Thanksgiving


It’s been said God bestows
each man with a thousand orgasms.

I’ve spent four times that.
How good He’s been.