the mountains are hazy with timeless passivity
 sprawling monotonously in the left-hand corner
 while clouds diffuse and fill the entire top half
 before bumping daintily into a bright red parakeet
 perched suicide-like on a beautiful gnarled branch
 arched by the weight of fruit and one ripe peach
 hung a motionless inch from the gaping beak

 here is transient beauty
 caught in permanence
 but of what avail is such perpentual unattainment?

 i know the stupid bird can never eat the stupid peach

This poem speaks mostly for itself, to me it is about the essential uselessness of some art. For those who have never seen a Chinese painting, just think Amy Tan and tigers and goldfish and willows and songbirds. The object of most scrolls is to capture ‘transient beauty’ or some similar profound notion about nature.

About the poet: Arthur Yap was born in Singapore in 1943. His first collection of poems, ‘Only Lines’ was published in 1971, for which he received the National Book Development Council of Singapore’s first award for poetry.He has since published various collections of verse such as ‘Man Snake Apple’ and ‘Commonplace’. In 1983, he was awarded the prestigious Southeast Asia Write Award in Bangkok and the Cultural Medallion for Literature in Singapore. He is also a prolific painter.

— Ann