Boey Kim Cheng (b. 1965)
SELECTED POEMS
Reservist
Time again for the annual joust, the regular fanfare,
a call to arms, the imperative letters stern
as clarion notes, the king’s command, upon
the pain of court-martial, to tilt
at the old windmill. With creaking bones
and suppressed grunts, we battle-weary knights
creep to attention, ransack the wardrobes
for our rusty armour, tuck the pot bellies
with great finesse into the shrinking gear
and with helmets shutting off half our world,
report for service. We are again united
with sleek weapons we were betrothed to
in our active cavalier days.We will keep charging up the same old hills, plod
through the same old forests, till we are too old,
too ill-fitted for life’s other territories.
The same trails will find us time and time again,
and we quick to obey, like children placed
on carousels they cannot get off from, borne
along through somebody’s expensive fantasyland,
with an oncoming rush of tedious rituals, masked threats
and monsters armed with the same roar.In the end we will perhaps surprise ourselves
and emerge unlikely heroes with long years
of braving the same horrors
pinned on our tunic fronts.
We will have proven Sisyphus is not a myth
We will play the game till the monotony
sends his lordship to sleep.
We will march the same paths till they break
onto new trails, our lives stumbling
onto the open sea, into the daybreak.
by Boey Kim Cheng
from From Boys to Men (2002)
