Koh Jee Leong (b. 1970)
FEATURES / TRACK CHANGES
Of Conceits
Written by Jee Leong Koh
Dated 7 May 2020
I am extremely reluctant to make any changes to “To a Young Poet” (first published in The Rialto 86) because it is one of those rare poems that came to me at once and whole. I had just finished rereading Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and wondered what I would say to a younger poet about writing poetry if I should be asked. It was odd for me to think that I was no longer a young poet and even odder to think that I should be giving advice to anyone, but the conceit must have appealed to the imagination and to a secret conceit, for under the powerful impression of Cavafy’s poem “Ithaca,” I sat down at my desk, and “To a Young Poet” came like a gift. You don’t look a gift horse, or buffalo, in the mouth.
To a Young Poet
Quit the country soon as you can
before you’re set on a career path or marrying
the home ownership scheme.
Pay no heed to the village elders.
They are secretly ashamed that they did not leave.Quit the country but do not
shake the dust off your feet against it.
Leave instead with a secret smile
for all that leaving has to teach you.Learn what it is to be welcomed
for the coin in your purse, for strong hips
in pushing a cart uphill, a firm voice in a good cause.
When the welcome wears off, as it will,
learn to leave again, this time by the sea.Be always on your way, and on arrival
sleep with anyone who asks. You never know
what gift they may have for you in the morning.
You will discover, suddenly or over the course of a winter night,
what gift you have for them.
Always kiss goodbye on the lips.There will be seasons of great loneliness.
You cannot outrun it, so sit and survey
the thunderless desert.In every town, pick up the local accent
and blend it into yours, already impure,
as a secret ingredient is fused into the top note of a perfume.
Hearing you, the taberna will wonder where you are from.
Drink deep of their wonderment. Do not betray it.After you leave a good tip for the barkeep,
climb to your narrow room and write whatever you wish.
Your flowers will grace the sweaty brow of a buffalo.
Your politics will smell of perfume.
If you write about the old country, you will write
about a lover who leaves your side in the night
to stand by the window and look up at the crescent moon.
There are additional reasons for my reluctance to change the poem. I know “To a Young Poet” is one of the best poems that I have ever written. I am not the only person who holds that opinion. The editor of the magazine The Rialto thought so too when he accepted the poem for publication. So did the anthologist of The Heart of a Stranger: An Anthology of Exile Literature, when he placed “To a Young Poet” near the end, second to last, of a vast collection of writings about leaving home and hearth, ranging from ancient myths to the most up-to-date poems. Whenever he does a reading from the book, the anthologist tells me, he would read “To a Young Poet” last and people would come up to him after the reading and tell him that they bought the book because of the poem. I can vouch for what the anthologist said. When I read the poem at the anthology’s New York launch, I saw the audience palpably caught up in the dream of the words.
What I have said so far must seem insufferably conceited to you. It seems so to me as well. But I am trying to describe an exalted state of … contentment, a relationship of peace-that-surpasses-understanding to the poem, which is rare for me, and which makes it so difficult, even sacrilegious, to change anything about this particular poem. I would not only be letting down its original inspiration and subsequent audiences, but the poem itself. For when the poem has gone out into the world, it is, at least in part, and that the most vital part, no longer mine to keep and modify as I wish. My poem has quit me in exactly the same way as I had quit Singapore. It has left my tutelage, traveled, joined various causes, slept with different people, and written its own poems.
To a Young Poet (Revised Version)
Quit the country soon as you can
before you’re set on a career path or marrying
the home ownership scheme.
Pay no heed to the village elders.
They’re secretly ashamed that they did not leave.Quit the country but do not
shake the dust off your feet against it.
Leave instead with a secret smile
for all that leaving has to teach you.Learn what it is to be welcomed
for the coin in your purse, for strong hips
in pushing a cart uphill, a firm voice in a good cause.
When the welcome wears off, as it will,
learn to leave again, this time by the sea.Be always on your way, and on arrival
sleep with anyone who asks. You never know
what gift they may have for you in the morning.
You will discover, suddenly or over the course of a winter night,
what gift you have for them.
Always kiss goodbye on the lips.There will be seasons of great loneliness.
You cannot outrun it, so sit and survey
the thunderless desert.In every town, pick up the local accent
and blend it into yours, already impure,
as a secret ingredient is fused into the top note of a perfume.
Hearing you, the taberna will wonder where you are from.
Drink deep of their wonderment. Do not betray it.After you leave a good tip for the barkeep,
climb to your narrow room and write whatever you wish.
Your flowers will grace the sweaty brow of a buffalo.
Your politics will smell of perfume.
If you write about the old country, you will write
about a lover who leaves your side in the night
to stand by the window and look up at the crescent moon.
So, please understand that when I offer a small change — “They’re” for “They are” in line five — I am not fixing a car, nor correcting a child, nor legislating for a territory. Simply, I am making an offering, much like Cain’s, which I jealously hope will prove acceptable, but have no idea if it will.
