Theophilus Kwek (b. 1994)

SELECTED POEMS

My Grandfather Visits Pyongyang 

Too late, we find among his photographs 
a kingdom mostly dreamed of, 

its absurd architecture where 
he alighted sometime in October. 

Frame after frame resists comparison. 
There isn’t a place we’ve seen 

that stands as still, or with the same intent 
raises its glass towards heaven, 

all normalcy locked within a sound 
these pictures don’t contain—a pitch rung 

in the earth’s confines, too low 
for human hearing. Friends tell us to allow 

ourselves the time it takes
to grieve, or whatever brings us back 

to last year’s long continuum, 
but something stays the eye. How in some 

perspectives he’s already gone, 
gone from the boulevards where wide-crowned  

trees fill up the viewfinder, 
and men and women in work clothes hover

outside our field of vision. He’s 
somewhere else entirely, now close, 

now looking in, the disappearance 
nothing more than a trick of the lens, 

though we fall for it again and again. 
How like him, we think, 

then catch ourselves. The leaves turn 
on their own impulse in our hands.

by Theophilus Kwek
first published in Moving House (2020, Carcanet)

 

SELECTED POEMS: “HO 213/926” >