Month: February 2018

Love in a Fallen City

Wendy Chan - English language & literature TutorLeave a comment

I do not want to forget it

when I watch “Love in a fallen city”. I think about our story.

We meet each other at CUHK fellowship.

I am a final year undergraduate student and you are a graduate student.

I want to know more about you who are as strong as the overarching green tree.

One day, Don Quixote drops me an email and invites me to a date.

I told Jenny about it, wondering what it seems to mean.

I am a Cinderella because I am surprised and thrilled.

It is like a dream to me.

Indeed, it is surreal, too real like a legendary tale.

A stands for aspiring, B stands for brilliant, and C of course, is captivating

I think you will be as promising as the letters to me.

Our first kiss tastes like lavender in an open field, fresh and enlivening like the sea

The tree is budding in autumn gentle breeze, murmuring that a love story begins.

If there had not been an impressionist painting exhibition, we would not have grown so intimate as we can be.

This morning, I get up and wait for you before sunrise and this evening, I become your wife before sunset

My watch which you gives me as our love token tells me that our love will last forever.

Therefore, I want to spend the rest of my life with you and remember our happiness ever after.

 

written on 18/1/2018

We Wear The Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Wendy Chan - English language & literature TutorLeave a comment

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,–
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

This poem is about the social face that we wear each day when we socialise with each other in the public. We all wear the mask to get along with other people in the society for courtesy or protection. However, our private soul is torn and tortured inside crying out aloud. And, we have a long way to go ahead of us.

Uncivilization (miming Irving Layton’s From Colony to Nation)

Wendy Chan - English language & literature TutorLeave a comment

A dull people,
without charm or ideas,
like the savage games
of making their own fortune.

Deferring to monitor and censor;
Not ashamed for this,
But given over to gambling,
the leverage speculating of money,

Some with a priest’s voice
in their cage of numbing mind
preach the uncivilised religion of
barbaric rules and customs.

One can ignore them
(the vast distances would help)
and suppose them at the bottom of Mount Sinai
hearing the Ten Commandments from their prophet Moses to guard their behaviour.

written on 14/1/2018

Valentine for Ernest Mann by Naomi Shihab Nye

Wendy Chan - English language & literature TutorLeave a comment

You can’t order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two”
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, “Here’s my address,
write me a poem,” deserves something in reply.
So I’ll tell a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn’t understand why she was crying.
“I thought they had such beautiful eyes.”
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the off sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

I like this poem very much because it is beautifully written. Art cannot be created on demand. Art can be explored and found in unexpected places where you might feel offensive and disgusting. But the art work would seem beautiful at least to the artist. Artists have to live in a way that enables them to find the subjects of art work.