A Crackle of Flames, A Circle of Rainbow
A Selected Poems, spanning 1967-1977, by the foremost Singaporean Malay poet Mohamed Latiff Mohamed, A Crackle of Flames, A Circle of Rainbow (Ethos Books) is worth the read. The poems are from two collections, the first bearing the same title, the second titled When the Butterfly Breaks its Wings. This is a fighting book of poems, passionate and plainspoken, often lambasting the New Malays for not fighting for their own dignity, culture, and history, but giving it all up instead to serve Chinese dominance in Singapore. Yet the high rhetoric often ends with a lyrical, and sometimes mysterious, image. For instance, "Poetry of Song" begins unsparingly:
if what i say hurts you
then that is what I intend
because i like to tell stories
exposing harlotry as it is
right before our very eyes...
and ends with:
the tears of the wretched
who have lost everything
at dawn on the blue petals of pomegranate
the call to prayers reverberates
love and longing overlap
and the moon falls on the tip of the jambu tree.
Many of the poems in the book speak about the purpose of poetry in a marginalized community. The stand-out poems for me are "A Sculpture for a Poet," "Moon Broken into Three," "This Is a Story," and "Poet." As Singapore commemorates the bicentennial of its colonial domination, the ending of Mohamed's poem "Raffles" is suitably acerbic:
Everyone welcoming him with hospitality
no one who dared to rise and challenge
and only then did he know
this place he landed in
was full of fools nary of dignity
these people here
welcoming him so willingly
bestowing him their history, dignity for seven generations to be.
if what i say hurts you
then that is what I intend
because i like to tell stories
exposing harlotry as it is
right before our very eyes...
and ends with:
the tears of the wretched
who have lost everything
at dawn on the blue petals of pomegranate
the call to prayers reverberates
love and longing overlap
and the moon falls on the tip of the jambu tree.
Many of the poems in the book speak about the purpose of poetry in a marginalized community. The stand-out poems for me are "A Sculpture for a Poet," "Moon Broken into Three," "This Is a Story," and "Poet." As Singapore commemorates the bicentennial of its colonial domination, the ending of Mohamed's poem "Raffles" is suitably acerbic:
Everyone welcoming him with hospitality
no one who dared to rise and challenge
and only then did he know
this place he landed in
was full of fools nary of dignity
these people here
welcoming him so willingly
bestowing him their history, dignity for seven generations to be.
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