Like A Seed With Its Singular Purpose
(Firstfruits, 2006)
“The poems in Cyril Wong’s collection are indeed seeds – each one starts something vibrant and new growing in the world. And though he may write of disaster, it is with triumph; though he may look into the darkest corners, he finds a light there that he brings back to fill his poems, and from there, to fill the reader’s mind. These are seeds of light that believe in life – so much so that they can look at it honestly."
- Cole Swensen
PRACTICAL AIM
After great pain, what would the body
learn that it does not already know
of relief? When that fire-truck has raged
past, what do I rediscover about silence
except that I would always miss it?
Do trees mind if it is the same wind
that passes through their heads everyday?
After the mall is completed, must we
remember the field it now inhabits
where we raced each other as children?
If my lover forgets to wake me with a kiss
a second time this week, should I worry?
Does solitude offer strength over time, or
is denial of it the only practical aim?
After the earthquake, would it matter
if no one saw two dogs from different
families approaching each other
without suspicion, then moving apart?
As the workers wash their faces hidden
by helmets that beam back the sun,
should they care about the new building
behind them beyond a fear of it falling?
If my mother cannot see how else to be
happy, is it enough that she may lie
in bed, convinced God watches her sleep?
After deep loss, what does the heart
learn that it has not already understood
about regret? When all light finally
forsakes a room, do we take the time
to interrogate the dark, and to what end?
WALLS, LOSS OF LIGHT
“Other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up
and choked it, and it yielded no crop”. – Matthew 13:7
Blame the self, blame you – few do both.
You are the room I flee with the door flying shut behind me. If I come back, it is from exhaustion, not regret.
Inevitable how my mother lost me in the middle of a sentence about a happy life, amidst ‘marriage’ and ‘the christian faith’.
Beware the taxi-driver with his colour-printed pamphlets about God and The Way. Two miracles, he claimed, in a life without miracles, when luck visits the unlucky at any time, and eventually.
Beware the evangelist whose mind is buried like a bookmark between the pages.
The mind must be an interminable rush of clouds, the occasional good weather.
Walls are you. Any loss of light is also you.
Takes time to accept this is how I find you. Only this or inside a house on fire do you regain my full attention.
Nothing stopped Mother Teresa, not a broken collarbone, not two heart attacks.
Isn’t it like you to prefer the gift not given with great emotion, but with great discomfort – the act of kindness no kindness to us.
Happy the atheist that buys the poor man a meal, no thought of your kingdom in her head.
Let’s return to that chair, the dark room encircling it like a suspicious dog, your whip drawing my body to its reaches, followed by a slow, nearly tender settling of the self, that moment when the body rediscovers sensation – so this is why I let you do this, this is why you did not heed my cry and stop...
Let’s talk about endings. Some I ask for, some you inflict upon me. (Not some. Most.)
You arrived stomping upon the void’s wide roof, proclaiming ownership, spinning out the world on the loom of your laws, laws you had in you all along without question.
When did you first perceive the need for your pale shadows, children born thirsty for your light?
Is the cliché then true, that the point of conflict was to charge the light with meaning – not just hope, but also reward?
Or is the mystery not a mystery after all, that you arrived without reason, like a seed with its singular purpose – purest want – needing us to fail and keep failing in the light of your original success?
I kneel to respect you, the you in the altar, the sculptural cross, the you that hangs in the air for as long as incense can hold a church in its atmosphere.
The stories contradict not just each other (Jesus healed two blind men after Jericho, according to Matthew; Mark claims it was only one), but also themselves (“Not be judge, lest you be judged”, as opposed to “…judge the twelve tribes of Israel”, in Matthew’s account).
I enter your house, a spy committing the sign with a finger kissed by water.
Already, altar boys send a frisson down a thigh; clenched eyes upon the brink of something spiritual, my head bobbing under the cloak (“hard and rough” as Simone Weil described of the test for what is real).
My throat is lined with weeds. If it sounds like I am choking, you are wrong.
I am back in a room that has given up its light. The chair is you. And I am also you. At last, I admit this.
This also means you are a fool and full of holes.
Admit this is not going anywhere. Admit you never meant for any of us to triumph.
- Cyril Wong (Copyright 2006)
