Like a Seed with its Singular Purpose
by Cyril Wong
Firstfruits Publications, HK$100
'If you can be this sad, you can also be this happy.' There's no doubt of the intensity of the experiences Cyril Wong reflects in this, his fifth collection of poetry. The sadness is patent. But the happiness seems something hoped for, rather than achieved, except perhaps in the joy of expression, the joy of creating his work.
If the personality presented in each poem is one and the same, this book presents the only son of parents who wanted him to do well at school (a cane was used 'to whip my school grades into shape'), and who also wanted him to have children within a happy, Christian marriage. His father ceased talking to him 20 years ago, when he learnt more than he was ready to learn about his son's private life. Wong became alienated from his mother, because her hopes and expectations for his life jarred with his own desires. This work shows the pain of rejection, hope for acceptance, and the desire for a different version of happy love and domesticity.
Wong lives life on the three levels of body, mind and spirit. Simple actions such as cutting toenails or trimming sideburns lead him to consider other types of loss: the loss of loved ones and the personal dissolution that occurs at death. He reacts deeply to cultural manifestations and events broadcast through the international media. Heat responds to an exhibition about the Japanese occupation of Singapore during the second world war. That day is a moving narrative of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.