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Poems on the MRT

Halley's Comet by Ally Chua

 

'Halley thus concluded that all three comets were, in fact, the same object returning about every 76 years... he predicted its return for 1758. [However], Halley died in 1742 before he could observe its predicted return.'
-Halley & His Comet, Peter Lancaster Brown

Ask Hades about the absence of Persephone
in her six months of summer and light. Or

Penelope, weighted down with twenty years
on her brow. Any waiting lover when the space

between messages grows pronounced. Faith is
faint beam against the negative space

of seasons. Understand: letting go is
an act of risk and sometimes, the beloved

does not return. Every lover knows desire
does not sever clean; it lingers long after

the last rays of love. Strange how we make
space for ghosts. Even now

I can picture Grandma; how she would've
loved this particular cut of bone years after

the last rose on her burial mound.
So Halley, against the odds, trusted

that a celestial body will return
when there's never been a precedent.

That somewhere, in the cosmos
dotted with supernatural nebulas

something as brilliant
as a glacier with a fire tail

found reason to come back,
again and again.

Published in Acts of Self Consumption (2023)

Purchase the book here.

Ally Chua is a Singaporean writer now based in Boston. She was the 2019 Singapore Unbound Fellow for New York City and has been published in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Cordite Poetry Review, and Salamander Magazine. She is the author of poetry collection Acts of Self Consumption (2023) by Australian press Recent Work Press, and novel The Disappearance of Patrick Zhou (2023) by Singapore press Epigram Books.

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Poems on the MRT is an initiative by the National Arts Council, in partnership with SMRT and Stellar Ace. Produced by Sing Lit Station, a local literary non-profit organisation, this collaboration displays excerpts of Singapore poetry throughout SMRT’s train network, integrating local literature into the daily experience of commuters. Look out for poems in English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil in trains on the East-West, North-South and Circle Lines, as well as videos created by local artists and featuring local poets in stations and on trains. The Chinese, Malay, and Tamil poems are available in both the original languages and English. To enjoy the full poems, commuters may read them on go.gov.sg/potm.

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