Félix Cheong Seng Fei
Felix Cheong Seng Fei (1965, Singapur). Escritor y agente cultural singapurense, autor, entre otras obras, de los poemarios Temptation and Other Poems, I Watch the Stars Go Out, Broken by the Rain y Sudden in Youth, del libro de relatos Vanishing Point y de dos volúmenes de flash fiction satírica, con el título Singapore Siu Dai. Ganador en 2000 del Premio al Artista Joven del Año concedido por el National Arts Council de Singapur, es también conferenciante en diversas universidades de todo el mundo.
OBRAS:
Singapore Siu Dai 2: The SG Conversation Upsize! (2014, Ethos Books)
Singapore Siu Dai: The SG Conversation In A Cup (2014, Ethos Books)
Vanishing Point (2012, Ethos Books)
Sudden in Youth: New & Selected Poems (2009, Ethos Books)
The Woman in the Last Carriage (2007, Landmark Books)
The Call from the Crying House (2006, Landmark Books)
Different (2005, Ethos Books)
Idea to Ideal: 12 Singapore Poets on the Writing of their Poems (editor; 2004, Firstfruits)
Broken by the Rain (2003, Firstfruits)
I Watch the Stars Go Out (1999, Ethos Books)
Temptation, and Other Poems (1998, Landmark Books)
POESÍAS
FELIX CHEONG Selección y versión al castellano
de Teseo Cuadreny y Fátima Fernández-Palacios Parejo
LO QUE SE MUEVE, ES OSCURO
(en memoria de Bob Kane, creador de Batman)
La noche es joven
tras la máscara.
Su corazón está acostumbrado
y cegado por la oscuridad.
Alas extendidas,
se tragará las calles.
Abatiéndose sobre aquellos
cuyas conciencias no pueden dormir.
EXTRAÑÁNDOTE
Te extraño
alba, sueños y polvo,
siempre que me quedo sin palabras
y me arrastro, desdentado y silencioso al fin,
hacia la perrera de tu corazón.
Te extraño
en la privacidad del dolor,
un llanto acurrucado bajo las sábanas,
un beso inacabado
en la distancia.
Y debería extrañarte
cuando no estoy ni aquí ni allí,
ni un fantasma ni una sombra,
más de lo que el amor puede soportar,
más de lo que el tiempo permitirá.
NOTAS PARA UN SUICIDIO
Tengo un hilo
alrededor de las muñecas
y puedo descoserlo
cuando quiera.
Manos liberadas, pulgares cruzados,
dedos como alas agitados,
me he convertido en ese cuervo
que graznaba en mis sueños.
http://www.2384.es/wp-content/uploads/2384-14-5mb.pdf
Missing You
I miss you
dawn, dream and dusk,
whenever my words run out
and crawl, toothless and silent at last
to the kennel of your heart.
I miss you
in the privacy of pain,
a cry tucked beneath sheets,
a kiss unfinished
over distances.
And I shall miss you
when I'm neither here nor there,
neither a ghost nor a shadow,
more than love can endure,
more than time will allow.
Published in Temptation And Other Poems (1998)
What Is It To Write?
(for Anna)
It is not a vacation
from your life
when you weary of meetings and rain,
waiting for the bus
and cursing your luck.
It is a vocation
that curses your life
and can't wait for luck
but must meet head-on
the bus weary and rain.
It is not to scribble
a granted sky
by a tree
in the evening park
with your dog running free.
It is to run the dog inside,
scribble the evening
into the sky and park
your tree between the granted and the free.
Published in Temptation And Other Poems (1998)
Art, for Christ's Sake
Must I be a handmaiden,
the way your Mother was
a page blank as obedience,
on whom you will enact,
with my every breath,
your word to be kept ?
Or must I take on
your crown of thorns,
your wounds in my side,
bearing the world in lines
that shiver like arms
racked across the sky ?
Published in I Watch the Stars Go Out (1999)
Dragnet
The two 18-year-olds who invited the world to watch them lose their virginity online said they were neither 18 nor virgins, and had no plans to have sex together but insisted that their motives had been pure. - The Straits Times, 23rd July 1998
When Christ once tasked
us to put our lives on the line
and be fishers of men,
was this what He meant -
broad-casting the net
with everything we are,
to save, out of still waters,
what went overboard ?
Published in I Watch the Stars Go Out (1999)
I Watch the Stars Go Out
Perhaps love
is a view of stars
through the telescope of years
now aged,
no longer uncommitted
in chosen places,
nor fearful
of that strident moment
when light explodes
into a million shards of heart
Published in I Watch the Stars Go Out (1999)
A Detective Sonnet
Words find no purchase in these streets.
I could wake the silence with a gun
and all the confession worth a buy
is a shrug, a blink of sun.
If only you could see man as I
see him, every tunnel of day
blundering in the blind, a cul-de-sac
through which evil empties its ways,
you would understand why all I want is a woman
whose heart hits me true and right,
and that will be enough --to be here, a stiff
drink warming in her light
and her tears christening my past
when my case is closed at last.
Published in Broken by the Rain (2003)
Broken by the Rain
(for Daniel)
I am broken by the rain,
leaves telling on the fall,
poems I have missed
when I refused to rise up
to the dreaming in their call.
I am broken by the rain,
silence taking to the streets,
the falter and linger
that did not matter once
till my past learns to speak;
neither iron nor names
hewn to the bone,
but the losses I cut
when I know it's due
to call a stone a stone.
Published in Broken by the Rain (2003)
I'll Make This Knife Talk
come any nearer,
and i¹ll make this knife talk,
swear it in your guts, cut you up
and make you dinner
for the dogs,
which is what you are
and where you belong.
you dare say you love me,
knuckles again at the ready?
do you know my small hours
in the park, the small steps
to inch your damage off,
rosary holding down the tremor
in my palms, watching summer children
and their lengthening, laughing shadows
lashing my heart?
no, i am no longer your wife.
i will not put it down.
it is my voice now.
I will not be put down.
Published in Broken by the Rain (2003)