Fort Canning

Easter bells ring over Singapore,
filling the evening sky above
the terrace and the shining blue pool;
house geckoes chirrup around the fans
orbiting slowly overhead,
and old friends meeting you the first time;
“She’s lovely”: the same words everywhere
across age and race, culture and clime.

This is a revised version of a sonnet I wrote earlier. You can click back in the previous Poetry posts to find the earlier version, if it interests you

We stake ourselves on words’ illusive boons:
Odin hung on the trunk of Yggdrasil
nine nights self-sacrificed to win the runes,
howling, full stretch, impaled by his own will;
since we’re not born that way, with silver spoons
shoved in our mouths, but bound to hone our skill
through inane phases fickle as the moon’s
two faces, though it may be all worth nil.
While some read destinies in blood and earth,
I put down my roots in black and white,
careless of my accident of birth;
talking up my idiolect to write
off earth’s grubstake in me, for what it’s worth,
from scratch, charged with the debt I must requite.