Angeline Yap (b. 1959)
SELECTED POEMS
Merbak
When was it I first heard the merbaks cry?;
Calling, always, mate to mate.
I loved them from the very first;
It was because they mate for life
(So father said).I have loved watching you;
Loved the soft grey warmness of your breast;
How, hanging upside down upon a branch,
You'd pluck the red fruit of the Madras Thorn;
And how, erect, you'd sit upon a fence and call,
Waiting to be rejoined.Always, you'd call,
Always a pair of you;
I never saw you solitary
But one had fallen careless to the cat.
Then for a while you'd call, in hope,
Before there came upon that jet black head
So resolute a set,
As if to say, "No, not another."I understand your cry.
It ever has been mine;
"Never, never, never."
by Angeline Yap
from Collected Poems (1986)
