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Air and Edge
for Hijjas
Not many ever change a skyline,
send up vertical horizons
of concrete or white stone
meshed with those other illusions,
glass and steel.
Tell us about tomorrow
the architect's guess is almost over the top.
But the view from the brink!
He's a juggler of four dimensions
in a boom-town of lightning strikes,
tin mines, and half a dozen tongues,
drawing a structure of daring
on a field of dream,
hoisting up beyond Babel
sculpted forms that speak
with serenity of the very small:
a tower like a bamboo shoot,
a bank that quirks to a cocked hat
with kampong rooflets at the foot,
the standing wave of a bright-green mall.
a stadium like the spread of a Nyonya fan.
And bus 23 from Ampang takes you by
an invitation to Mecca: the fluted Tabung Haji.
It rises like a monolith of music
or the indrawn breath before the azan.
by Jan
Owen, Resident Poet at Rimbun Dahan, 1997 |
Concrete Metal Glass