Emergency IT Lesson 3: Analysing and Composing A Poem

The Son is in Secondary School by Affran Sa’at
My badge has a Latin motto
Hope for the future
The future is hope
Or something

At times black crows try to interrupt
When we sing the National Anthem

It is difficult to maintain
The whiteness of my shoes
Especially on Wednesdays

I must admit there is something quite special
About the bare thighs of hardworking scouts

The Malay chauffeurs
Who wait for my schoolmates
Sit on the car park kerb
Telling jokes to one another
Seven to the power of five is unreasonable

On Chinese New Year Mrs Lee dressed up In a sarong kebaya
And sang Bengawan Solo

The capital of Singapore is Singapore

My best friend did a heroic thing once
Shaded all A’s For his Chinese Language Multiple-choice paper

In our annual yearbook
There is a photograph of me
Pushing a wheelchair and smiling
They caught me
At the exact moment
When my eyes were actually closed

Respond to the following threads. Do note that you are also to comment on your friends’ comments and these will be graded too. : To teachers: (Discussion thread)

1. What are the poet’s thoughts? What were his feelings as he thinks back on these?

He is reminiscing of his days when he was at youth; when his life’s made of very simple, everyday things. As he recollects, he pens down his observations when he was still young; when he still had the time to observe and ponder over many things that cross his eyes.

Right now, while he remembers all these past events which might seem to be insignificant to most people or even to him when he was young – for he’s always observing – he is, in fact, cherishing the times when he had those experiences. He could be deep in thought, feeling his way through his memories. There could be mixed emotions, for not every thing he remembers are good; but memories that last they are.


2. Think back on our days in Primary School. Do you share the same sentiments? What were your memories of those days? Write a poem of no less than 4 stanzas.

Yes, memories of high sentimental value now, memories that can’t be materialised now, but memories that will be archived for sure.

This Growing Tree
Yihan
There was a time when I entered primary school
At a negligible height of 112.
Nanyang rejected,
Tao Nan accepted.
And that’s how it all began.

Right round the school hall
There was a time when I’d play catching.
And together with my friends in Primary 1
Right round the school compound
We’d go exploring.
That’s where the roots start growing.

There was a time in Primary 2
When I’d start drawing
Right in the quadrangle
With my friends watching.
Watching those cotyledons drop.

There was a time when Tao Nan underwent great renovations
And new area implementations
Came propping up one by one.
And before Primary 3 ended,
It seemed like I was in a foreign school.
A foreign school with growing leaves.

There was a time when more excursions came
When my free time was restricted to a frame.
In came the workshops and overnight camps.
In Primary 4
When more work drove,
When the branches starts blooming
On a stove.

Exchange programs.
And even more camps.
A heavier schoolbag.
All of which made those flowers in Primary 5,
Start to grow and come alive.

Then came the times
When we’d learn everything in one semester,
And consolidate anything in the other.

Doing countdowns for the national exam.
Free time then was reduced to zero.
All waiting for us to show what we have
As a hero.

All eyes on us. For we’re on the top.
To maintain those scores of the past.
And hoping that it’ll last.
I thought we were in agony.
Thought the bark’s rotting into an ugly mahogany.

Class Bonding
Was a typical thing.
Immersion Programs and even more camps.
Are added on to the waiting list.
They materialised after all,
And to not much surprise or appall,
We bonded.
We stayed connected.

And that’s when I knew the fruits ripened.