School legend

I think I would certainly like reading Singaporean poetry much more as a kid if Aaron Maniam was already published in circa 1996 and the only available compilations available at the time weren't seemingly only of Edwin Thumboo.

Saw Maniam's Morning at Memory's Border at Kinokuniya yesterday, and it's definitely well worth the $17-ish and more.

The following is a sample of his work from an online source (YEP Alumni).

Enjoy, and get a copy of the book. :)

Days Among the Karen
December 2003

‘I felt I was attaining the moving frontier
Beyond which colour and sound may come true
And the things of this earth are united.’
~ Czeslaw Milosz, Mittelbergheim

If truth can lose its trappings
Then it happens here
Complexity unravels to a kernel
Unadorned, open to the earth’s weathering
Under its lattice of mist

The earth is red
Flesh but not blood
Resined like time
From skin, soul

They wai, honour us
Wih Garuda’s greeting
Fingertips to forehead
Delicate balancing
Of the bounty
There can be
In simplicity

Welcome dance
Sword and song
To chase away bad spirits
Minor scales slide into fullness
From the cusp of harmony

The children smile
Shy as creation
Reminders that some things
Are not reduced for having happened
Any number of times before

The bougainvillae kindle
Brighter here
As if richer colour
Passion-warm
Is the best protection
From mountain cold

There are saffron robes around the trees,
Planted as each child is born.
There are spirit houses for the dead,
Sentinels to mountain tracks.
These are keepers of the forest,
Keepers of peace and pact,
Of time and truth and testament.

There are dissonances too:
Motor chugs, machine screams
And the unheard agony
Of a philosopher’s tree

But these fade
Leave only arboreal echoes
Leaf rhythms pulsing
Like words once tar and tarmac
Are stripped away, and
The foundations of all our cliches
Are laid
Bare.