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Moving People With Words

Poems on the MRT

DAYS LIKE A PROLONGED PARACHUTE AFTER A SPACE FLIGHT by Jason Wee

 

In the country that never was
we will meet in a past
but not the one we remember.

The ones we love are still the ones we love
but changed, with different lovers
in the country that never was.

In this past your pain lies in forgetting
afresh the shared drink, our bed, a name
but not the one we remember;

mine comes from forgetting nothing
of the now when we lie at night
in the country that never was,

my eyes held open by the fear that
in this place we share everything but love
at least not the one we remember.

This past is not worse, nor better,
in the country that never was
but closing in, like my choice to come
but not the one you’d remember.

— Published in A Luxury We Must Afford (2016)

Jason Wee is an artist and a writer. He is the author of four poetry collections, including From A (Undesirable) Diary (Temporary Press and Dakota Press, 2024) - shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize - and the Gaudy Boy Poetry Prize finalist In Short, Future Now (Sternberg Press, 2020).

His recent artworks have been shown at the Changwon Sculpture Biennale (2024), the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2022), the Asia Society Triennale (2020), and the Singapore Biennale (2019).

He founded and runs Grey Projects, an artists’ library and project space in Tiong Bahru. He recently co-founded Proud Spaces, a community and cultural centre in Redhill. He is an Asymmetry Art Foundation Fellow at Goldsmiths University of London.

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Poems on the MRT is an initiative by the National Arts Council, in partnership with SMRT and Stellar Ace. Produced by Sing Lit Station, a local literary non-profit organisation, this collaboration displays excerpts of Singapore poetry throughout SMRT’s train network, integrating local literature into the daily experience of commuters. Look out for poems in English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil in trains on the East-West, North-South and Circle Lines, as well as videos created by local artists and featuring local poets in stations and on trains. The Chinese, Malay, and Tamil poems are available in both the original languages and English. To enjoy the full poems, commuters may read them on go.gov.sg/potm.

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