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Jan 21 2023

New Year

Acrylic on rice paper ©Lena Tan 2023

Fireworks on the street
cakes steaming over the stove
new pajamas
grandma’s taro pudding
lion dances and white cabbage
tea and melon seeds
the smell and feel of new banknotes
old Singapore
so long ago

Oct 1 2022

Fifteen years

©Lena Tan, 2020

 

My father, in those sepia-tinted photographs,
looked forward to so much.
After so many disappointments,
he would rise like grass beaten by wind and rain,
then, bent by disease,
and, in the last insult by his own body,
taken by a stroke,
this gentle, unobtrusive man,
always in the background –
life seemed to get the better of him.
He was just a very ordinary man
who remembered all of us
by making meticulous notes of names,
birthdays,
significant events,
and cards given and received.
He did not chronicle the events of his life
nor did he write about himself,
but the things he left
show what he cared about
and how deeply he cared.

 

April 24, 1921 - October 1, 2007
Dec 13 2015

The year at dusk

 

image description

Du Fu “Night in a Pavilion”

Translation and artwork: Lena Tan, 2003

Du Fu 杜甫

(712-770, Tang Dynasty)

Du Fu came from a family of distinguished scholars and officials. In his youth, he showed a talent for poetry and calligraphy. All his life he longed to serve his emperor and country but failed to secure a stable role in officialdom, which consigned his family to a life of relative poverty. He observed the extravagance of the emperor’s court, the suffering of the people, and the ravages of war, and wrote about that in his poetry.

Du Fu is an acknowledged virtuoso in technique and language, master of the perfect couplet while innovative in style and content. Another Tang poet, Yuan Zhen, inscribed on Du Fu’s tomb: “Since there have been poets, there has never been Du Fu’s equal.”

More poets…