On watering slopes of hilly land
where white streams echo
blooms the concolvulus
Thundering rain-clouds
are brilliant with lightning
Creeping field-beans snake-plants
and the jade-stemmed mango shoot
drip with water
The dark-eyed monkey
swings from tree to tree
and the red-mouthed crane
calls from the coral-tree
Below
red-padi sings on riverine plains
Bright green bamboos touch the sky
and purple lotus blooms on black ponds
Moist dusk courts rice-fields and banyan trees
hides night-birds and insects
Only fire-flies dance in the cool
like shooting-stars
(UKM Bangi, June 1998)
The large-flowered jasmine blooms
in the gathering dusk
The white cotton wick in the oil-lamp
burns red
In the flushed skies
a broken bangle of conch-shells like the crescent moon
floats
A black cuckoo pecks
at the fragrant pollen of the mango branch --
a whetstone covered with silver dust
This forest
its clusters of golden blossoms
of the dark-branched mast-wood trees
moist cool shady as darkness itself
Beside it ivory sands
as bright as many moons heaped together
White flowers of the sea-pine washed by the waves
Listen to the roaring swell
of the sapphire-dark seas
The fishermen's boats have not returned
Soon rain will hide sky and land
(Penang, May 1998)