FRIENDSHIP

Friendship is like the breeze,
You can't hold it,
Smell it,
Taste it,
Or know when it's coming,
But you can always feel it,
And you'll always know it's there,
It may come and then go,
But you can know it'll always be.

FRIENDSHIP

You are friendly, kind and caring
Sensitive, loyal and understanding
Humorous,fun, secure and true
Always there...yes that's you.

Special, accepting, exiting and wise
Truthful and helpful, with honest blue eyes
Confidindg, forgiving, cheeful and bright
Yes that's you... not one bit of spite.

You're one of a kind, different from others
generous, charming, but not one that smothers
Optimistic, thoughful, happy and game
But not just another... in the long chain.

Appreciative, warm and precious like gold
Our friendship won't tarnish or ever grow old
You'll always be there, I know that is true
I'll always be here... always for you.

FRIENDSHIP

Standing by,

All the way

He to help you through your day.

Holding you up,

When you are weak,

Helping you find what it is you seek.

Catching your tears,

When you cry.

Pulling you through when the tide is high.

Just being there,

Through thick and thin,

All just to say, you are my friends.

FRIENS

A friend is someone we turn to
When our spirits need a lift.
A friend is someone we treasure
for our friendship is agift.
A friend is someone who fill our lives
with beuty,joy,and grace.
And makes the whole word we live in
a better and happier place.

SI TENGGANG'S HOMECOMING

i
the physical journey that i traverse
is a journey of the soul,
transport of the self from a fatherland
to a country collected by sight and mind,
the knowledge that sweats from it
is a stranger's knowledge,
from one who has learnt to see, think
and choose between
the changing realities.

ii
it's true i have growledat my mother and grandmother
but only after having told of my predicament
that they have never brought to reason.
in the country that aliented me
the took to their predecisions.
i have not entirely returned, i know,
having been changed by time and place,
coarsened by problems
estranged by absence.

iii

but look,
i have brought myself home,
seasoned by confidence,
broadened by land and languages,
i am no longerafraid of the oceans
or the differences between people,
not easily fooled
by words or ideas.
the journey was a loyal teacher
who was never tardy
in explaining cultures or variousness.
look, i am just like you,
still malay,
sensitive to what
i believe is good,
and more ready to understand
than my brothers.
the contents of these boats are yours too
because i have returned.

iv

travels nmade me
a seeker who does not take
what is given without sincerity
or that which demands payments from beliefs.
the years at sea and coastal states
have taught me to choose,
to accept only those tested by comprison,
or that which matches the words of my ancestors,
which returns me to my village
and its perfection.
i've learnt
the ways of the rude
to hold reality in a new logic,
debate with hard and loud facts.
but i too am humble, respecting
man and life.

vi

i am not a new man,
nor very different
from you;
the people and cities
of coastal ports
taught me not to brood
over a foreign worid,
suffer difficulties
or fear possibilities.

i am you,
freed from the village,
its soild and ways
interpendent, because
i have found myself.

MONSOON HISTORY

The air is wet, soaks
Into mattresses, and curls
Like fat white slugs furled
Among the timber,
Or silver fish tunnelling
The damp linen covers
Of schoolbooks, or walking
Quietly like centipedes,
The air walking everywhere
On its hundred feet
Is filled with the glare
Of tropical water.

Again we are taken over
By clouds and rolling darkness.
Small snails appear
Clashing their timid horns
Among the morning glory
Vines.

Drinking milo,
Nyonya and babasit at home.
This was forty years ago.
Sarong-wrapped they counted
Silver paper for the dead.
Portraits of grandfathers
Hug always in theparlour.

Reading Tennyson, at six
p.p. in pajamas,
Listenig to down-pouring
rain: the air ticks
With gnats, black spiders fly,
Moths sweep out of our rooms
Where termites built
Their hills of egg and queens zoom
In heat. We wash Our feet
For bed, watch mother uncoil
Her snake hair, unbuckle
The silver mesh around her waist,
Waiting for father pacing
The sand as fishers pull
From the Straits after monsoon.

The air is still, silent
Like sleepers rocked in the pantun,
Shelterd by Malacca.
This was forty years ago,
When nyonya married baba.

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for thier doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream and not make dream your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triump and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will Which says to them:"Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth to distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And-which is more- you'll be a Man, my son!

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Two road diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other,as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

THERE'S BEEN A DEATH IN THE OPPOSITE HOUSE

There's been a death in the opposite house
As lately as today.
I know it by the numb look
Such houses have always.

The neighbors rustle in and out,
The doctor drives away.
A window opens like a pod,
Abrupt, mechanically;

Somebody flings a maaress out,-
The children hurry by;
They wonder if It died on that,-
I used to when a boy.

The minister goes stiffly in
As if the house were his,
And he owned all the mourners now,
And little boys besides;

And then the milliner, and the man
Of the appalling trade,
To take the measure of the house.
There'll be that dark parade

Of tassels and of coaches soon;
It's easy as a sign,-
The intuition of the news
In just a country town.