Gwee Li Sui (b. 1970)
SELECTED POEMS
Alicia
I lived across a cemetery
And played among the grass
And evening drew with it much life:
I heard the spirits pass.
Leaves were spiralling in the dance!
The wind was whimpering, perchance!The gravestones were my books by day
For me a ten-year-old;
I read their stories furiously
And felt my blood run cold.
The night was riding like a horse!
The trees were raising their applause!I waited for the moon with joy
And held my lips to hum
And soon and faithfully I knew
Sweet Alicia would come!
The sun was fleeing from the dark!
The sky was shifting from their mark!The night was still when she appeared;
Alicia was a friend;
She knew the loneliness of day,
At night she held my hand.
The wind was simmering its power!
The grass was bending to the hour!We ran across the whirling fields
And ravelled in the shades;
We unturned the prints of silence
Beside the flowers of Hades.
Darkness was moving, listening!
Creatures of the dark were heaving!Below the flames of stars we sat;
She read to me her verse
And told me figurative tales
Of magic and of curse.
The crows were woken from their sleep!
The night was impaling the deep!Alicia led me to the stones
And told each history
Of men and women buried there
In their melancholy.
The air was settling on the log!
The flies were turning through the fog!She sang to me a cheerful song
To help my tears to dry
And, when she sang, I knew it was
Near time to bid goodbye.
The flowers were dipping in their breaths!
Dry leaves were covering their deaths!Dinner awaited me at home;
She stood where grass was sheared;
I waved farewell to Alicia
And then—she disappeared!
The wind was stirring up again!
The ash was summoned by the strain!By day when I was all alone,
I wandered through the grass
And sat by sweet Alicia’s tomb
And read the words of brass.
A voice was beckoning, sometimes!
The clouds were shaping in their mimes!Alicia said, “I’m Life and Death;
As I have lived, I lie.”
When will you rise again, I asked;
“In the twinkling of eye.”
The twigs were circling for a sign!
Thoughts were rivalling to align!The months when I was twelve years old,
Huge cranes and workers came
To excavate the cemetery
That did not have a name.
Grey dust was colouring the wind!
The ghouls were shrilling as they grinned!The remains of the dead were moved
To a columbarium
And a long train tunnel was dug
Underneath the stratum.
The night was stagnant in the cave!
The earth was howling for its nave!Often when I take the train
That skims beneath the grass,
The tunnel is too dark to tell
What once this area was.
The air is harrowing its awe!
The subterranean night is raw!But, out the window when I gaze
Through the black abysmal,
I see again sweet Alicia
Smiling in the tunnel!
A gust is goring through the traps!
The rocks are echoing, perhaps!
by Gwee Li Sui
from Who Wants to Buy an Expanded Edition of a Book of Poems? (2015)
