Edwin Thumboo (b. 1933)

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SELECTED POEMS

Renovation

I want to feel pure the wind
Glazed by dark narrating shadows
Among casuarinas tempered by sea-salt.

I want to see brown the hawk
Unrelenting beautiful death-dealing
Break open the unsuspecting sky.

I want to hear forked the tongue
From an uncoiling body tracking
Lusty crickets in the loam.

I want to touch blue the haze
Dimming Karimon, over-reach
Unknotted slopes to possible mysteries.

I want to taste sharp the petai
Straight from the curling pod
To hold the village in my mouth.

I want these five beginnings.

by Edwin Thumboo
from A Third Map: New and Selected Poems (1993)

 

SELECTED POEMS: "Ulysses By The Merlion" >