High-Rise
Koh Buck Song
when night has fully drawn
its veil of darkness
across a livid sky,
when the stars have settled into their turn
to take silent vigil,
then come
to the top
and look there
where tiny cars seem insignificant
streaks of light
intermittent scratchings
across a canvas of quiet
hundreds of pin-point lights-
not beckoning, but fixing
unto each a spot of privacy
as though on some unseen grid of vulnerability-
they too
keep watch this night
but the air does not enfold them
the way it does you
its odd, isnt it?
the way perspective divides
and the thought
of traversing gaps
is too much for the mind
so we return,
find our own level,
gravitate back towards our alloted niches
some are not used to looking long;
its something to be learned.
Link for news article, The Straits Times: Branding Singapore- What do youths see?
http://news.asiaone.com/News/Education/Story/A1Story20100412-209873.html
Link for wordle image : Highrise-- Singapore
www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2297611/High_rise-_Singapore
Reflections:
-I chose the picture of a couple of high-rise apartment buildings all lit up from within and silhoutted against the night horizon because of the overall effect and emotions the picture was able to convey to me. A pretty and scenic, even awe-inspiring picture it does make, but i felt it reflected to me the same message that high-rise tried to convey-- because of the isolated and cut-off apartments, although all in the same block and even on the same floor, the housing arrangements of majority of singaporeans has led to some kind of segregation and the unspoken fact that a lot of us do live in our own worlds and stop caring as much about the community and the nation because in that little flat, we are self-sufficient. So I found it pretty good that the picture could contrast ironically if only the viewer takes one step deeper into observing its details after reading High-rise-- by showing us that the warm glowing lights and indigo skyline may not be the best idea to share our aspirations and communicate our ideals to each other.
- To me, the poem speaks of distancing in communication between people because they are physically bridged, or maybe because living in such cramped conditions sometimes overpowers us with a sense of crampedness and it makes us feel like living in flats stacked above each other, we lose some sense of identity the flats are all identical from the outside. Hence we try and find a distinct part of ourselves that we guard tightly and refuse to open to the outside world lest that defining part of us become common like so much of us has. I feel this feeling pertains to many Singaporeans who have realised or are aware of the impacts of high-rise housing on identities and the way we face the world nowsadays, which is why the poet chose to write a poem encompassing this subject-matter.
- Singapore poems are unique in the sense that most poems are very distinctive in the way they think about subjects and the specific approaches and subject-matter that they talk about. we should have a Singapore Poet Laureate(:(:
- times change. i think perhaps a century down the road a Singaporean, any Singaporean, won't be able to relate to the poem, because the context is totally different and chances are that mindsets and feelings will have changed, whereas the poem was written in full-view of the context of the present time and hence require you to be part of 21st century Singapore, to know what living in a flat and to be encumbered or feel trapped by those four walls would feel like, and hence to eventually relate to the poem.
