Written piece
Taming The Storm
Fong Hoe Fang
Singapore
About this piece
This poem was written on 23 May 2017 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Operation Spectrum in Singapore. The operation saw the unjustified detention without trial of 22 activists (lawyers, justice workers, church workers) under the Internal Security Act.
Taming The Storm
We remember still
the thunder of those years.
How lightning’s forked tongue
tore the green from virgin trees
and scorched the bark of the old.
How white fire’s hammer fist
turned spines into crushed bone
and pinned others under stone.
Incessantly they raged
fracturing families and bonds
extracting silence from our land.
Only the winds continued their howl
screaming naked power and
spinning stories around.
We could but only mark
the places of brethren who fell.
We could but only view
the bodies of those who bled.
We sprinkled the earth
with the salt of quiet tears.
Waiting …
as time tamed the storm
as yesterday’s savage silence took new form.
Now we paint our words on other skies
plant where the wounded and fallen lie.
We nurse our fallen tears
rechannelled the trickling trails
that had folded unbroken land.
Not a river yet but
still we seek our sea.