To a Young Poet

Quit the country soon as you can
before you’re set on a career path or marrying
the home ownership scheme.
Pay no heed to the village elders.
They are secretly ashamed that they did not leave.

Quit the country but do not
shake the dust off your feet against it.
Leave instead with a secret smile
for all that leaving has to teach you.

Learn what it is to be welcomed
for the coin in your purse, for strong hips
in pushing a cart uphill, a firm voice in a good cause.
When the welcome wears off, as it will,
learn to leave again, this time by the sea.

Be always on your way, and on arrival
sleep with anyone who asks. You never know
what gift they may have for you in the morning.
You will discover, suddenly or over the course of a winter night,
what gift you have for them.
Always kiss goodbye on the lips.
There will be seasons of great loneliness.
You cannot outrun it, so sit and survey
the thunderless desert.

In every town, pick up the local accent
and blend it into yours, already impure,
as a secret ingredient is fused into the top note of a perfume.
Hearing you, the taberna will wonder where you are from.
Drink deep of their wonderment. Do not betray it.

After you leave a good tip for the barkeep,
climb to your narrow room and write whatever you wish.
Your flowers will grace the sweaty brow of a buffalo.
Your politics will smell of perfume.
If you write about the old country, you will write
about a lover who leaves your side in the night
to stand by the window and look up at the crescent moon.

Published in Inspector Inspector (Carcanet, 2022)



Jee Leong Koh is the author of Steep Tea, named a Best Book of the Year by UK’s Financial Times. His Snow at 5 PM won the Singapore Literature Prize. He heads the literary nonprofit Singapore Unbound, the press Gaudy Boy, and the journal SUSPECT.