Theophilus Kwek (b. 1994)
SELECTED POEMS
Pulse
after Wang Gungwu
i.
Take this, the city's wrist. Blood thunders
close to the surface, a curious blue
where the washed river's lost its bolder hues.
Or this, soft hollow of its temple,
where brushing past the first greying hairs one finds
an ardent throb young enough to send
a shiver down the spine. The method's simple:
it matters where you press your fingers—no-one approaches the heart straight-on
(where currents mix) unless a life's at stake.
And at the thigh or even the crook
of the arm even the best physicians
might seek a vein in vain. Young scholar, be warned:
a pulse is not a voice, nor a voice a song.ii.
But what of these charts, these measurements
of growth, these predictions and prognoses?
Once premature, she's tallest in her class
by far, and now runs the quickest mile.
(Some say it was in her stars at birth; taught well,
a child can learn to prove even the most
unlikely fate.) We scour these numbers
for the luckiest traits, pray for portentsof what might come of her when we are old
and short of breath, and sight. Not what we know,
or think we know, nor what we're told—
though we will not hear when others tell us so.
It's hard enough to read the heart's direction.
What's buried here is more than circulation.
by Theophilus Kwek
first published in Moving House (2020, Carcanet)
