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Moving People With Words

Poems on the MRT

Aubade by Cyril Wong

 

Getting up. Harder
with each indifferent hour
I remain in bed.

Soon, sunlight enters
the room like a lover and
everything is touched.

The self sliding shut
over something not quite meant
to be imprisoned.

Some days the process
is delayed—brief comfort of
nothing in the head.

But the day demands
I heave my legs off the bed—
anchors into sea.

Words like loneliness
creep back into the spaces
between each heartbeat.

Soles of my feet re-
stitch themselves to their shadows
forming on the floor.

Published in Unfree Verse (2017)

Cyril Wong completed his doctoral degree in English Literature at the National University of Singapore in 2012. He is the Singapore Literature Prize-winning author of twelve poetry collections including The Dictator's Eyebrow, a volume of stories including Let Me Tell You Something About That Night, one novel, and editor of an anthology of Singaporean poetry and prose. He serves as co-editor for the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and was the founding editor of the poetry webjournal, SOFTBLOW. His poems and essays have been published in journals and anthologies in Singapore and abroad.

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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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