A Scroll Painting -- Arthur Yap

Guest poem submitted by Ann Ang

(Poem #767) A Scroll Painting the mountains are hazy with timeless passivity sprawling monotonously in the left-hand corner while clouds diffuse and fill the entire top half before bumping daintily into a bright red parakeet perched suicide-like on a beautiful gnarled branch arched by the weight of fruit and one ripe peach hung a motionless inch from the gaping beak here is transient beauty caught in permanence but of what avail is such perpentual unattainment? i know the stupid bird can never eat the stupid peach -- Arthur Yap

This poem speaks mostly for itself, to me it is about the essential
uselessness of some art. For those who have never seen a Chinese painting,
just think Amy Tan and tigers and goldfish and willows and songbirds. The
object of most scrolls is to capture 'transient beauty' or some similar
profound notion about nature.

About the poet: Arthur Yap was born in Singapore in 1943. His first
collection of poems, 'Only Lines' was published in 1971, for which he
received the National Book Development Council of Singapore's first award
for poetry.He has since published various collections of verse such as 'Man
Snake Apple' and 'Commonplace'. In 1983, he was awarded the prestigious
Southeast Asia Write Award in Bangkok and the Cultural Medallion for
Literature in Singapore. He is also a prolific painter.

Ann.