Before we bite into the poem, we must understand the hand that offers the fruit. Goh Poh Seng was born in Kuala Lumpur in 1936 but spent his most formative literary years in Singapore. He was a doctor by training (University College Dublin), but a poet by vocation. This duality—the scientist’s precision married to the artist’s passion—is everywhere in the "Fruits Poem."
At dusk the stallkeepers fold their cloth like maps, coins clink, the day’s fruit settles into sacks. We carry away the evening’s bright contraband, a paper bag of dusk and sweetness, and for a while the city tastes of orchard and recall— of summers stretched and folded, of seasons kept in pockets, small and miraculous as a seed. fruits poem by goh poh seng
The concluding lines of the poem introduce a darker, more pragmatic reality, which the presence of the fruit helps to mitigate. The "Ill" of the Future Before we bite into the poem, we must
by Goh Poh Seng
What makes the so enduring is its unapologetic sensuality. Western poetry often treats food allegorically (the apple of Eden, the pomegranate of Hades). Goh refuses such abstraction. His fruits are stubbornly, joyfully physical. The "Ill" of the Future by Goh Poh