Goh Poh Seng’s poem is a lyrical meditation on the sensory abundance of nature and its power to provide emotional resilience. A pioneer of Singaporean literature
There is often an underlying focus on the ripeness of the fruit, which serves as a metaphor for the human experience—the peak of life and the inevitability of softening or aging Style and Tone fruits poem by goh poh seng
If you came here searching for the as a simple text for a child, you have found something more valuable: a meditation on time, loss, and the fierce joy of being alive in a perishable body. Goh Poh Seng’s poem is a lyrical meditation
Juicy and sweet, crunchy and fine Fruits abound, a colorful find Apples and oranges, bananas too A rainbow on the market, for me and you Identity: The poem explores the search for identity
The poem opens by immersing the reader in a specific atmosphere. The speaker describes a "golden time of day," a phrase that immediately evokes the period around sunset or late afternoon. This is a time of transition, where the harshness of the midday sun softens into something mellow and forgiving.
While the exact text varies slightly depending on the anthology, the core of the is an ecstatic, sensory listing of local fruits, followed by a sharp, existential turn. Let us reconstruct a representative excerpt (paraphrased from his collected works):