Changes and Chances

By Leonard Ng

Uncompromising yet accessible, the six sequences in Changes and Chances explore love, sorrow, time, nature, and humanity. By turns passionate, hermetic, and heartbreaking, they simultaneously endure and celebrate all the imperfections of the world. Leonard Ng blends free verse with adaptations of both Western and Asian forms to create a musical poetry grounded in the traditions of both East and West.


A purchase of the book comes with a complimentary Changes and Chances postcard (while stocks last)!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ethos Books
• Release date: Apr 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9789811432606

Book preview

changes and chances

Changes and Chances

© Leonard Ng, 2014

ISBN 978-981-09-2512-3 (Print)

ISBN 978-981-14-3260-6 (E-book)

Published under the imprint Ethos Books

by Pagesetters Services Pte Ltd

#06-131 Midview City

28 Sin Ming Lane

Singapore 573972

www.ethosbooks.com.sg

www.facebook.com/ethosbooks

With the support of

national arts council singapore

The publisher reserves all rights to this title.

Cover illustration: Cattle Egret by Su Myat Sandi

Cover design by Kum Suning

Layout and design by Pagesetters Services Pte Ltd

Printed by Ho Printing Singapore Pte Ltd

National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Ng, Leonard, 1979-

Changes and chances / by Leonard Ng. – Singapore : Ethos Books, [2014]

pages cm

ISBN : 978-981-09-2512-3 (pbk)

ISBN : 978-981-14-3260-6 (ebk)

I. Title.

PR9570.S53

S821 -- dc23

OCN891602963

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changes and chances

CONTENTS

TEN LOVE POEMS

INTERLUDES AND OCCASIONS

BLESSED BE

ACROSS THE HOURS OF SLEEPLESSNESS AND WAKING

A TAROT OF BIRDS

NIGHT PRAYERS

Notes on the sequences

Additional notes to A Tarot of Birds

Acknowledgements

About the Author

TEN LOVE POEMS

In the mingled linen and wool of ourselves, you and I,

lovely is the world.

— Yehuda Amichai

1.

Sitting up at night, I listen to the traffic;

car engines quaver through the quiet air.

Where I sit, the room is swathed in shades of darkness;

beyond the window, a bright moon bathes the streets in light.

The bedroom floor’s tiles lie cool beneath my feet;

a blanket, half-discarded, coils warm about my body.

A nine-tailed dream is scampering across the miles to you,

to slip between your sheets and hold you in its arms.

2.

Cut loose your mooring ropes, and let the winds

bear you up, the faces of waving friends

grow smaller beneath you; and see the world

spread itself before you as you pass, at once

both map and territory. Let mountains,

rivers, greens of field and jungle be

your guardians now. Lean out from your basket.

Let the hospitable air’s innocuous whispers

brush against your ear, carrying you as it does

softly over the threshold of each new day,

each destiny. Remember only this:

however far you wander, you will find

hidden in each new place a memory planted,

to steal on you unexpected, a lover in the night,

secret and tender as the rain which inspires

your fluttering heart and your soft maiden’s body

with delicious shivers of love.

3.

Your face is not the same

as once it was —

your eyes less ingenuous, your body leaner,

your bones now finding their true strength —

time has twined itself through every fibre of your being

and carries you along now,

incandescent.

In every moment you are never the same,

in every moment always already gone,

passing into the ashes of memory;

I cannot hold you,

cannot keep you as you are

in the sparkling air of your perfection.

Only with this do I content myself:

Every time I gaze,

each time I set my eyes

upon the upwelling fountain of you

you are always new,

every word we exchange

is the first one ever spoken,

and when I kiss you, beloved,

the moment takes flight, mortal and triumphant

as a shower of leaves in the wind,

each moment when I kiss you, lost as it begins,

always for the first and only time.

4.

The