"Fasting in Ramadan"

God, what am I
But a pale copy
Of the true ascetics?

A lesson in humility.
Only under such heat, such thirst,
Does the soul realise,
The body is just a mirage.

Forgive me, God, for
Crossing the dates on the calendar,
Numbering thirty days of abstinence;
For observing how much
Temptation surrounds me.
The tap's mouth glistens, even though
It is only my eye that has polished it.

And it is only my longing
That saturates the colour of apples,
That turns a passing scent into form,
Like breaths sculpted in cold weather.

Feasting before dawn,
Each sunrise I fade,
Reduced to a mouth, source
Of desire, of original sin.
And at each sundown, a glassful of water
Travels down my gullet
And turns me solid again.

God, when you breathed life
Into the first man, was that
What answered his craving?
Or did he know then, that
As you fed him, you also gave him
Hunger, a crumb of that world
That you will cast him down into?

by Alfian Sa'at
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This poem is reproduced with Alfian's permission. I met him a few days ago at the Ubud Readers and Writers festival, and among the books on sale, I found his A History of Amnesia (2001, Ethos Books).

Somehow the book fell open at this page, which I think means the poem wants to be blogged about. There's timeliness too, a poem about fasting during this month of Ramadan. The poem is in itself a prayer, and a very moving and human one.

What is fasting all about? I think Alfian explains it so clearly "a lesson in humility" a reminder that the physical body is "just a mirage".

Fasting is (necessarily) tough, a real test of both mental and physical strength. The speaker recognises his own weakness. He crosses dates of the calendar, admits his temptation ... and begins to notice just how much of it surrounds him.

The first year I tried fasting, I was amazed at how heightened the senses become when one is deprived of sustenance. Colours are brighter, smells are so much sharper, and so it seems, is the recollection of taste. (There is also a "getting high" effect, which surprised me.) I remember standing in the supermarket, watching a Chinese couple eat guava. It was a fruit I'd never much liked before, but as they ate, I could almost feel and taste the sweet juicy crunchiness in my own mouth, and desired it so very much. (Since then, I've loved guava!)

Something similar happens when the speaker notices the more deeply saturated colour of the apples, and the scent of them that conjures up their form.

There are images I love in the poem - the scent of apples being like "breaths sculpted in cold weather", the eye polishing the mouth of the tap, a glassful of water turning the speaker solid again at dusk.

I love too the ending of the poem. the idea that God gave men hunger as "a crumb of that world / That you will cast him down into." A small taste of suffering that so many have to endure as a fact of their daily existence.

"Hong Lim Park"

Since this poem is context specific, here’s a bit of background information. Hong Lim Park is a public park in Singapore with a Speaker’s Corner. To read more, click here, and search under Singapore.

Hong Lim Park

a fat man stands
announces an opinion
as if it mattered

in the hot sun
the trees yawn and
almost sigh

the retirees wish
they had their
park back


by Gilbert Koh

Note: First published electronically by Softblow. Permission to reproduce here granted by the poet himself. Thanks, Gilbert.

To read Gilbert’s other poems, go to his blog Reader’s Eye, which is listed on the sidebar of Links.
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Although very simple, this poem is ambiguously complex, and far from being didactic like other more overtly political poems, it allows the reader to bring his/her own reading to it. As such, it is necessary then for me to lay down my own ideological stance here (to each their own). Distressed over certain worrying trends in Malaysian socio-political landscape, I decided to put this poem up as a little food for thought.

Hong Lim Park represents Singapore government’s very strict and sometimes near draconian control over free speech. At the speaker’s corner, people can’t just go up impromptu and speak on a topic, but need to apply for a permit to speak from the nearby police outpost. As it is known, strong political dissent and opposition in Singapore are often clamped down hard and there is little room to publicly express differing political viewpoints on issues.

The first stanza of the poem plays out the tensions on the ‘freedoms’ that are allowed at the speaker’s corner. The word “Announce” though suggesting something important brought to the public’s attention is quickly understated and reduced to being only an “opinion”. The sharp irony in “as if it mattered” further dismisses whatever weight that “opinion” might have. Indeed, if the “opinion” had been allowed, it certainly wouldn’t have mattered too much – not political nor too big a social issue, since the speaker and the speech made would have been first checked and given approval. .

In fact, would anything addressed at the speaker’s corner interest anybody at all? The mention of the trees in the second stanza mark the absence of any listening party in the park, just as their animation with human expression of boredom (“yawn”) suggest a complete disinterest or apathy to whatever is being said.

At the poem’s close, retirees sit around comfortably and want more than anything else to enjoy the nice greenery of the park. Having somebody yakking and ranting away seem to be a nuisance and disturbance of the peace. To them, why would anybody seriously bother standing there talking “in the hot sun”?

Some other questions to consider:

- Is a different reading of the poem possible?
- Does the arrangement of the poem create a certain effect or ‘feel’?
- Does the word "sigh" in the second stanza complicate my reading of apathy in the poem?


BTW: For those Malaysians who haven’t heard or watched Danny Lim’s short film 18 (the film itself takes 18 minutes) which won Gold for short film documentary at the Malaysian Video Awards and came up runners up in the amateur category at the 2005 Freedom Film Fest, please click here or here (it is copyright free).