Santubong Poem by Michael Regan

Santubong (1)

Beautiful the turquoise bay,
Beautiful the emerald mountains,
But how indifferent to our fate!

Serenely stand the emerald mountains
As if they know the answer
To man’s eternal question.

We always seek for higher meanings
But these myriads of palms, these mountains and this sea
Are just content to be.

Silent flashes
Illuminate the Western horizon
Somewhere they’re enjoying the downpour.

Now it’s our turn
As a thousand drummers
Beat on the roof of our bungalow.

Like a glowing golden pillar
The setting sun
Hovers over the bay.

How cool the mountains look
But we step from the air-conditioned car
Into the draught from a furnace.

Homage to Virginia Woolf (2)

A hundred-thousand blossoms
Stare at the sea, gaze at the sky
But they see nothing

(1) A resort on the coast of Sarawak near the city of Kuching.
(2) This refers to a sentence in To the Lighthouse in which flowers are said to be “terrible” because they see nothing. i read this book during my stay at Santubong.