Koh Buck Song is the author and editor of more than 20 books, including three poetry volumes – _A Brief History Of Toa Payoh And Other Poems_ (1992), _The Worth Of Wonder_ (2001) and _The Ocean Of Ambition_ (2003). The anthologies he has edited include Singapore: _Places, Poems, Paintings_ (1993) and _From Boys To Men – A Literary Anthology Of National Service in Singapore_ (2002). He read English at Cambridge and has a master’s in public administration from Harvard Kennedy School. He was poet-in-residence at the Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh, in 1992, and has represented Singapore at literary events including at Cambridge, MIT and Harvard. He was The Straits Times’ literary editor and columnist, and General Editor of the literary journal Singa. He was a National Arts Council Board member and chairman of the Drama Review Committee, and has served on many other panels including the Singapore Arts Festival steering committee.
The poem, “Sungei Kallang Afternoons At St Andrew’s School”, written in 1992, recalls a return visit to the poet’s old primary and secondary school, evoking reflections on life stirred by memories of an art class kite-flying lesson in 1977, in which the poet lost his kite when it fell into the old Potong Pasir kampong across the Kallang River.
Sungei Kallang Afternoons At St. Andrew’s School
by Koh Buck Song
Rivers seldom look their years:
Your concrete sides, Kallang, withstood
Time’s careless wash. I remember, ginger-foot
clambering, into the flowing tides of your much
earlier self we dipped, to rescue
footballs over-kicked to touch
on drenched days of boyhood strife.
These days, such bravado would seem undue,
unbecoming perhaps, among new peers
in new stations of this ever-shifting life.
Young adults sometimes try to look their years.
One heightened afternoon, it was here too,
a new game in hand, we staged maiden runs
for our art class handiwork
of diamond-shaped rice-paper and bamboo.
I remember my kite touched the clouds but once,
zig-zagged like a sniped bomber, perked,
then disappeared, left me forever,
into the village, now flattened, yonder
and was it you, unchartered moat, perchance,
who conspired in that loss? The lesson to ponder
was well-learnt: Life has its ups and downs, too.
It could well be that the kampong lad,
roused from lakeside reverie by
that plummeting godsend, now lives sky-high
in a Potong Pasir river-view flat.
And fitting, also, if from his window he sees me pace
or dash goalwards today, with strength renewed
after fifteen years, and if, across that space,
he mistakes my age, my stance, and feels anew
his own delight that day, when strangely blessed,
you sent a gift from the other side. I guess
I will ever only know this side of you.
