Again Thinking

There are moments in life when sadness overwhelms you, becomes sadness unending.

You wonder at the unfairness of it all and fall into the why me? mode, till you remember you have been there before, have outlasted the last all-crushing blow and found the courage to go on, to hope for better things.

Someone else called it The Courage to Be. Sooner or later all of us will need to find this courage to be - it could be called for at the advent of an illness, at the loss of a loved one or at the loss of love itself.

Whatever the reason and timing of the call upon our reserves of inner strength, it is never ever going to be easy to live the day to day as if nothing has happened.

One should not live a single day as if nothing has happened. Things happen all the time, good things, bad things, indifferent things.

Accepting things for what they are (and not for what we think they are) is the first step towards the courage to be.


A long time ago at 24, before accepting that the courage to be has to born from within, cannot be an external covering even if woven with love and tenderness, I attempted to portray



sadness unending

because love is torn from the mind
of a small boy in the hurt aftermath
of death, its colour is black.
there is no joy in death
for the small boy to bear to the edge
of impending manhood, only the colour
enlarging the dark mind with black
asserting the sameness of love,
to the death wish of flowers
dying in the sun they adore.

because death is the god given choice
of lovers they choose to live
as priests of their destruction
deified in the colour of death
love walks in us all
walks, talks and turns from faces
of impending death, from the corner
of a loving hand, into eyes
a soft melody in a mournful flute
of a young lover drowned
in the sadness impending.

because death is around some corner
we walk in avenues of love
deifying idols cast in our images
challenging the voice of the sea
mocking the sour poet
walking alone in his mind
singing of death to himself
gathering dew in his night eyes
aware that no morning sun
will dry the tears of the dead
or the dying.


published in Commentary Vol.4 No.2, January 1980
University of Singapore Society, Singapore