The Planners - Boey Kim Cheng

They plan. They build. All spaces are gridded,
filled with permutations of possibilities.
The buildings are in alignment with the roads
which meet at desired points
linked by bridges all hang
in the grace of mathematics.
They build and will not stop.
Even the sea draws back
and the skies surrender.

They erase the flaws,
the blemishes of the past, knock off
useless blocks with dental dexterity.
All gaps are plugged
with gleaming gold.
The country wears perfect rows
of shining teeth.
Anaesthesia, amnesia, hypnosis.
They have the means.
They have it all so it will not hurt,
so history is new again.
The piling will not stop.
The drilling goes right through
the fossils of last century.

But my heart would not bleed
poetry. Not a single drop
to stain the blueprint
of our past's tomorrow.

Another Sunday Morning By Carter Revard

What I walked down to the highway for,

                                   through the summer dawn,

                                            was the Sunday funnies,

                     or so I thought—

                                      but what I remember reading there

                           in the shadowless light

                                               among meadowlarks singing

                     was tracks in the deep warm dust

                                           of the lane, where it parted

                                  with its beige dryness the meadow’s dew—

                    the sleek trail where a snake had crossed

                        and slid into tall grass;

                                                  the stippled parallels

                with marks between them where

                                                  a black blister-beetle had dragged

                                 its bulbous belly across

                      in search of weeds more green;

                                                              the labyrinth of lacelike

            dimples left by a speed-freak

                                        tiger-beetles’s sprints that ended

                                         where it took wing

                              with a little blur of dust-grains;

                                            and stepping through the beetle-trails,

         the wedge-heels and sharp-clawed hands of skunk-track

                              crossing unhurried and walking

                                       along the ditch to find

                                  an easy place for climbing;    

not far past that,

            a line of cat-prints running

                                               straight down the lane and ending

        with deep marks where it leaped

                                                  across the ditch to the meadow

                 for birds asleep or wandering baby rabbits:

and freshly placed this morning,

                                               the slender runes

                                      of bob-whites running, scuffles

                    of dustbaths taken—

                                        and there ahead

crouched low at the lane-edge

                                     under purple pokeweed-berries

                     four quail had seen me,

                    and when I walked slowly

                    on toward them, instead

                           of flying they ran

with a fluid scuttling

                                     on down the lane and stopped frozen

                                               till I came too close

               —then quietly when

                     I expected an explosion

         of wings they took off low and whispering

                and sailed, rocking and tilting

                                          out over the meadow’s tall bluestem,

             dropped down and were gone until

 I heard them whistling, down by the little pond,

                 and whistled back so sharply

               that when I got back to the  house

                  they still were answering

                   and one flew into the elm

                  and whistled from its shadows

                                                  up over the porch where I sat

       reading the funnies while the kittens

                         played with the headlines

                                         till when the first gold sunlight

                 tipped the elm’s leaves he flew

back out to the meadow and sank

                                   down into the sun-brilliant dew

                             on curving wings,

                and my brothers and sisters waked

                                           by the whistling came pouring out

       onto the porch and claimed their share

                                  of the Sunday funnies—

                     and I went on to read

           the headlines of World War Two,

with maps of the struggling armies leaving

                                            tank-tracks over the dunes of Libya

                            and the navies churning their wakes

                             of phosphorescence in the Coral Sea

                             where the ships went down on fire

                             and the waves bobbed and flamed

                          with the maimed survivors , screaming

                                  in Japanese or English until

                                  their gasoline-blistered heads

                                  sank down to the tiger sharks

                                   and the war was lost or won

                                 for children sitting in sunlight,

                                  believing their cause was just

                                 and knowing it would prevail,

                                   as the dew vanished away.