These poems about death, dying and rebirth were originally posted on the AsianVoices Website (1997-2006), which featured poetry and fiction by young Asian writers.
Grieving Cherry Blossom
Although I’m hurting I care,
Yet still—I’m hollow.
I can’t stand on my legs
I feel weak.
The way she looked and the way she became
Makes me cry silent tears.
My eyes are dry but my heart carries a load.
The past, the present and tomorrow’s hurt.
The sorrow is great
Being all around me,
Above me, beneath me and within me.
My tears are my fashion statement,
When I walk and sit, talk and think.
They are the gems of my eyes
And the stabbing pain of my grief.
I try to reach that zone of comfort and lasting survival.
The way my family used to be was a life I can imagine.
The way we’ve become, invisible.
The way we should’ve been, unknowing.
Sharing tears in the morning but soundless at night.
That is where we dream our anguishes beyond;
Far from the reaches of our own hands.
Never speaking a word or flinching.
Laying in bed still, dreaming, inclining to a greater misery.
The earth proclaimed the day
And the sky partook in our wailing.
Neglecting what I heard and what I saw.
There are no exact words that can tell.
The feelings are full and the words are silent.
Tick! Tock! Tick! Tock!
Time runs and brings along someone.
Wrinkling the skin and weakening the knee.
The lady that died in that hospital bed, died full of strong will.
Time and earth proclaimed.
But her spirit soared higher than the fascination of the pretty pink flowers
of a cherry blossom tree on a clear Spring day.
~Ma. Elyza Caliolio (The Philippines, USA)
Behind the Glass
Your hair is too neat, lips too pale.
Your smile still clings to your face.
Your hands gently folded on your bosom.
You are a flawless doll, unreachable behind the glass.
You are too young to sleep alone in the dark.
You left too fast without a good-bye.
You reached your destiny too early.
You are at one with eternity.
My hair is moist, lips shivering.
My sorrow still strikes my heart.
My fingers quiver in my freezing fist.
I am a tranquil puppet, noticeable in the glass.
I am too old to live with only my anguish.
I was disillusioned too slowly with my survival.
I remembered your departure too late.
I am at one with the earth.
Who’s the face on the glass with those tears still wet?
Who’s the face behind the glass with those charms still enchanting?
Who is still puzzled by the coming days alone?
Who no longer feels the pain and grief?
Whose body is in earth?
Whose heart is in earth?
Dry tears, silent screams, numbed mourning, lost memory,
All are locked behind the glass,
From now till then.
~by Carrie Chan (Hong Kong)
Falling
Falling into a dark, fathomless cave
sightless and freezing, screams
echo a thousand times as if there were
a thousand of me.
Failing to feel with numb fingers
helpless for none was there, waiting
to reach out with a grip that would
save me.
Forgetting the preceding future, remaining
motionless and calm, accepting
the incarnation of mortality, I relinquish
the present form of me.
Foreseeing without anticipation, in the aftermath of
doubtless disaster, sleeping
to dream the inconceivable
I die.
~by Vivian Chiang (Hong Kong)
A Child’s Sandal
In the early morning,
walking to the bus,
I see a yellow sandal
hanging on the end
of a branch of a tree
in the green ravine,
a size so small it has to be
for a child of two or three.
How did it get there?
Someone picked it up
from a rubbish dump?
Too cute to leave behind?
Was the mother carrying
so much she did not know
the child had dropped
a sandal? Or was it thrown
through a window from a home
in the block nearby? If so, why?
Were there adults quarrelling,
a child crying at the door?
Did the man have a mistress
and the wife wish to kill
herself? Was it just
the sandal that was flung?
Where is the child now?
Does it have shoes to wear
somewhere?
~by Agnes Lam (Hong Kong)
The poem was written at Victoria Road on 3 November 1998 in the wake of news of a woman who threw her children from a building before jumping down herself.
Absolute Silence
I fasten my keiko-gi and mae-himo,
tied in a bow at the back.
Hearbeats pass through
my panoply…
A shiny shadow reflected on
the still grey ground…
Red petals fall,
no sound…
A hard cold thing merges with
soft warm thing.
~by Kevin Ling Kin-man (Hong Kong)
Ghost Writing
It is with the deepest sorrow that I am writing to you.
A call received,
A favour asked,
Ghost writing.
“Did you read the paper today?
So you know what happened?
The robbery.
That was at one of ours.
We need a condolence letter.
Can you fax it within the hour?”
I remember the first time I learned about death—human death, anyways, God knows we went through pets pretty fast in those days—a couple of dogs, a cat, a bird, the maritime disaster in the fish tank—but with people . . . well let’s put it this way: when you’re flushing a dead fish down the toilet you don’t normally think ‘there but for the grace of God go I’. But with a person. “You may have noticed someone isn’t here today. I’m afraid I have to announce that Scott was killed in a car crash on Saturday.” I’d just been talking to him the Friday before—probably the only conversation we had ever really had. We were just walking together after school, carrying our adidas bags, talking about nothing in particular. He stopped for the bus. I kept on walking. What if we hadn’t talked or if we had talked a little longer, just another few seconds? Wouldn’t that have been enough to throw his whole life (and death) off schedule?
It is with the deepest sorrow that I am writing to you to express my condolences to you and your loved ones
His wife will arrive in the afternoon to claim the body.
Leaving four children in Pakistan
To await her return.
The beginning is always the easiest part
Of a letter,
Of a life.
But after that there are choices,
Chances.
I can’t type another word.
What is there to say to a woman I don’t know
About a man I never knew
And never will?
So I look to the right.
Stuck on the office wall
A JPEG image, printed out
300 dpi.
Each pixel a single square of solid colour.
the squares together form
A pattern
An image
Of two children.
A wild girl with stickers of blue and gold stars covering her eyes
Holding her little brother,
His hair coiling down to his shoulders in a mane of ringlets
It is with the deepest sorrow that I am writing to you to express my condolences to you and your loved ones on the tragic death in the line of duty
Duty.
What was he thinking
With the shotgun raised
His finger at the trigger?
Why did he hesitate?
I phone home
The starry-eyed girl is at kindergarten
The curly-haired boy answers
Babbling syllables
His voice
Soundwaves
Transduced,
Electrons coursing down a wire,
Then digitized.
A stream of numbers,
Each a one or a zero,
But the numbers together forming
a pattern
I listen for a while
To the flow of his voice.
It is with the deepest sorrow that I am writing to you to express my condolences to you and your loved ones on the tragic death in the line of duty of your husband, Zafar Iqbal Khan.
What will become of this letter?
Will it be torn up?
Will it lie untouched at the bottom of a box,
Will it be kept pristine in an envelope in a folder in a drawer
To be brought out when the moment is right
The folds on the page becoming sharper each time
As the words rewrite themselves.
A letter to a widow.
Nothing to it.
Nothing that hasn’t already been done a million times before.
Last week
I heard that Brian died.
He had been married to a friend
She lost her husband one last time
While her son regained a father.
A riddle it’s best not to ponder.
I didn’t know what to say
Other than “I’m sorry to hear”
I didn’t know him well.
Saw him sometimes in the gym
Working out.
He looked fit.
But survival of the fittest deals in averages.
Grief deals in specifics,
Each death leaving its own empty spaces.
Is there comfort in knowing his wife and children will cope
Simply because
They must?
It is with the deepest sorrow that I am writing to you to express my condolences to you and your loved ones on the tragic death in the line of duty of your husband, Zafar Iqbal Khan. His selfless bravery, his immense respect for life and his desire to protect the innocent are an inspiration to all of us. Our prayers go out to you and your children.
Then there was that time about a year later—the summer between Grades 11 and 12. Sheer stupidity. I was cycling. To get my mind off something, not just any something, but finding out my girlfriend at the time had been with another guy. So I’m going down Walkey and I turn onto Heron and just go cruising though the stop sign without thinking once let alone twice and right into the path of a Blueline taxi. Black Lincoln Continental. I don’t know whether I saw it first or heard it—the squealing tires. I went up over the hood, my back shattering the windscreen. As I’m flying through the air, all I can think is “oh shit”, not very poetic I know, but probably pretty common last words all the same. I blacked out for a moment, but came to and saw the sky falling away beneath my feet, giving me enough time to break my fall with an arm. If I had opened my eyes a second later. . .?
All it takes is that second
For an accident
For a skull to be smashed
For a heart to cease beating
For a trigger to be pulled
A good man has gone
But his ghost remains.
Somewhere in the pixels that form the starry-eyed girl
Somewhere in the electrons that pulse down the wire from the curly-haired boy.
Somewhere in the code of all things.
Our prayers go out to you and your children. We pray that his soul is at peace and that his courage will be rewarded in heaven as it will be remembered here on earth. We pray that as his children grow up, they will always carry with them the knowledge that their father was a great man who revered life. And we pray that they will inherit his bravery and his dignity.
It is with the deepest sorrow that I am writing to you
It is with the deepest sorrow that I am writing to you
~by Stephen Richards (Hong Kong, Canada)
This poem is about real events (‘Ghost writing’ is when you write on behalf of a person who is then assumed to be the author).
Bardo
May not the
Element of space
Rise against me
In acrid acrimony.
From the north
Arrives green goddess
Ghanta of serpent head
Garlanded with skulls
And in her hand
Holding metallic bells
Sounds in surges
Deafening eared knell.
Let me remember
Infinite compassions
The past deeds
For all the things
Great and small
For all the creeds.
For the white dove
For the yellow bear
For fields of worms
For earth borne cares.
Let not the
Element of sun
Arise against me
In wandering thirst
Or burning symptoms.
Yogins arise westward
Bringing seeds of wisdom
With wavering of garlands
Four coloured lights
And the scents
Moulded from purified elements.
All prevailing circles
Let not the element
Of the earth
Arise against me.
In splintered segments.
~by Durlabh Singh (England)
Bardo means ‘between two’. According to Tibetan Bhuddhist beliefs, the bardo is an intermediate stage between death and rebirth. But the bardo can also refer to intermediate stages between consciousness and dreams.
Artist on Show
He’s clinically alive, the doctor said.
I press in closer, touch the panelled glass,
Watch his glassy eyes stare, hard face set.
It comes to me, while seeing him in bed,
Shut in his ward, he needed no palette,
No dyes, no clay to make a showpiece vase.
His blood bag bobs. Some sudden pull of arm
Perhaps? A draught replies.
He does not budge.
The chart of progress hung upon the wall,
Almost toplit, retains a certain charm,
While doctors’ pickled papers revealing all
Except a fading wish and living grudge
Extol to all their interest in him.
A crumpled bedsheet stiff with him still mocks
His skilful hand and thoughtful mind on show,
Bereft of craft: atrophied, not thin-limbed,
Departed, not alive. And as I go,
I chuck a coin into his trust-fund box.
~by Toh Hsien Min (Singapore)
AsianVoices Archives: These poems were originally posted on the now-defunct AsianVoices website (1997-2007), which featured poetry and fiction by young Asian writers. Copyright belongs to the original authors. If you are the writer and would like to remove, add or edit this work, please contact me at zijun01@gmail.com and I will promptly carry out your request.
