with excerpts from The Waves by Virginia Woolf
Poetry, Ho Yi Lin
(“I have been traversing the sunless territory of non-identity.”)
Schopenhauer spoke to me in a dream
one June night, a permanent stupor that only wants more than
it can get, hungry days on end under
the sore summer heat/ we plied across
creeks of solitude, through a mosaic
of water-logged theories thrumming along these
marshy fields, grass outstretched like asymptotes,
curving towards nothing. Infinite and starved.
I know I won’t make it here. I know nothing
about Will Zum Leben or Euclidean geometry or
Parerga and Paralipomena or
Ethics, not even ethics. I never know what it takes for me to survive,
clean and just. I think about running. I think about
these tarnished hands. I think about dissipating
under the summer heat. A miasma
of dampened longings. Infinite and starved.
I know I won’t make it here. I only do Monday Crosswords
because I’m lazy yet I ruminate about philosophy beyond
reach. This is what is enshrined, philosophy or not,
I dream. I scratch every itch I find.
(“We are forever mixing ourselves with unknown quantities. What is to come? I know not...”)
Reeking of diaspora I search for a
belief. June always hits me with the
subliminal stench of desire, corroding like
acid in my spine, immobilized but yearning. I’ve always been conflicted like that.
Clutter rebirths into the plains of Eden. Everything relearns.
It’s how I’ve learnt to seek for divinity in a foreign
tongue. I know that I always want something new,
to slip into novelty during
these dog days of genesis. I want more than
the blood of archangels, more than
waters that grant eternal salvation. Because
Eden means creation and creation means change
crumbling at my touch. I want to feel great like that.
I ruminate about rain and boggy soil I can sink into, eclipsing
these sweltering hours of revelation. I only search
for what is missing. I only search for everything but the truth.
This is what summer truly is. A seraph will open its arms for me to
weep tonight. Yet I still want more from June.
(“I am immeasurable; a net whose fibers pass imperceptibly beneath the world.” )
I am here, ripened for the cosmic and
tried for greatness. June will never make me feel
more alive than this.
Yi Lin is a budding writer and student from Singapore. She was a participant in the Creative Arts Programme Mentorship Attachment and her works appeared, or is forthcoming, in the Eye On The World (2024) anthology publication. Her recent poems have been chosen to be read at Poetry Festival Singapore 2024. You can find her @leanzered on Instagram.
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