Edmund Wong

One ordinary night, when you are playing with your fingernail
By the store, my dreary eyes are filled with seldom pleasure,
Of finding alone right before them a hidden treasure,
Proudly in triumph, as many a voracious eye fail
...

How jocund is Spring if thou art missing?
The nightingales' songs are sweetly sung,
Yet, unwarranted, disrupt my musing
On which thine apparition is up hung.
...

Farewell, my friend, the time for us to part
Hath come, as festive banquets have to quit,
By enduring Time, and our wavering heart,
In which our capricious lives have to meet.
...

One day at work I gazed outside,
Across the glass sev'n-storey high.
I saw those same piles, tall and wide,
Taking vast space right off the sky.
...

At a dark hour the news is broken:
Grandma has passed away last night.
The hour has passed, and no more is spoken,
For no word nor action can make it right.
...

It was upon a torpid summer night
When I was feeling so low and lonely,
As if my strength and courage were mortally defeated,
My hope and faith had melted away, and only
...

The sun, flushed with toil, is slowly leaving his watch,
As tenderly the moon reveals her curve.
Has it been five days since I last saw you?
I do not readily recall,
...

O dear, how, my love, how can I stay strong
In this wild age, when soul to flesh conforms,
As madness reigns over where truth belongs?
To see tawdry shows become beauteous forms,
...

My love is like an eglantine in May,
Yet she’s so much sweeter and free of thorns;
Nor she only blooms at some place or day,
For she’s ever in my heart adorned.
...

This is an eerie time
To make a living out of turning words into numbers
The parable of the sower cannot save you
And you try to save yourself by turning words into gold
...

I don’t know how I could sleep-
Oppression reigned my night;
Trains of onerous thoughts trampled
My mind, squeaking against
...

There was a cockroach, struggling
To survive on Christmas night,
Away from its hidden nook, naked to all,
Out into the unknown, for just a nibble;
...

I

I shall not be far away,
From the lapping sea gently calling me;
...

My heart is sinking
Before the hustling crowd
Whose words are heavy
As their sights are loud.
...

I met Cupid the other day
Lounging alone in the tranquil park,
By the lively lake, on the soft-thatched clay,
Where love was vowed in lay by faithful larks.
...

Why have you been so cold, consuming Life,
That has swallowed my youth in scathing Strife
For nothing- you motley, wild clay,
Have you ever sat out a sinless day?
...

Must I sing my prayers as I was taught,
While blatant atheists are never caught?
Fie, fie, hark how those obstreperous feasts
Abuse the decent night, where bloodshot men
...

Dear willow, please tell me what I should do,
When the evening sky has lost its hue,
And winter’s sacred white is overdue?
...

Many a night I ask the stars on high,
For whom a sylph aloft like thee would fall.
They neither crawl away nor draw on nigh,
Seeming not care to heed my plea at all.
...

How with the track of time can we withstand,
When Gaiety has become my enemy,
And let me not enjoy her company,
With whom my hours have lavishly been spent?
...