Yin’s “My Country I Will Build You Again” is from his collection of “Poems of Protests and Resistance”
My Country I Will Build You Again
If the flames rise any higher
You will burn to the ground
Perhaps that is preferable
To the rotten structure white anted
Looking good on the outside
Eaten up on the inside
They have built you
Not as you should be built
On integrity, necessity and responsibility
They have built you
On their egos and greed
Not according to your needs
Where once you were a rainbow
Of brown and black and yellow
And other colours too
Now they use only brown and green
You used to be a Tower of Babel
A cacophonous confusion
Of tongues from every land
Yet your people got along
In every way they can
I will wash away the stains
Accumulated through the years
With my tears
I will rebuild you
As once our founders intended
With bricks of many hue
In your garden I will plant
Flowers of every fragrance
So that we can all inhale
The perfume of our youth
Though everything else is wrong
That any day it will crumble
But your foundations are still strong
On that we will build a new country
Same as the old one
Where everyone belongs.
(The views expressed are those of the contributor)
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By Yin
Letters from Ward 5, Tanjong Rambutan
The country can swing high
If all stay humble and nice
Work together and share the loads
Nothing will be impossible to handle
The bad foundation must be uprooted
Don’t be afraid to change the bad causes
Once the admission of sins moving forward is easy
If only the politicians are the true sons and daughters
The greed and corruption will prevail
Until we all come together to burn it in our heads
We have to make history to build our nation
Caste out the bad narratives write in the good stories
Absolute power will corrupt the mind
It is the evil planting it in many forms
Once we go praying for our souls
We must learn and live with the scriptures
The good foundation of God and scriptures
The nation will not fall into pieces of pebbles
There will not be the nightmares in our minds
There will be the loads of good vibes
The falling of rainbow colours
It spreads its brightly coloured lights
How it shows us to mix together
The vibrant life the blossoming economy
The nation can fly high
With her flag waving by the wind
If all of us share our loads and stay united
Repair the bridges of faiths everything will be bless
Nice to read but nation are not build on words. Lets get a grip and full actions for poetries are never in motion, less to stirr the lazy idealist mnd
Disagree as there are words contained within a Constitution which acts as a guide and you can see the schemozzle in Britain now as there is no Constitution to guide them other than the closest being the Magna Carta, which is to curb the King’s excesses at that time. Words are important just as deeds are. Words can galvanise a rakyat used to stupor and hence the advent of the internet has largely put paid to rumours such as prevailed during the May 13th Incident. Of course, at the end of the day we need to act and act fast in order to turn the tide against the Taliban of Malaysia. Otherwise all will be lost.
You may be right in certain environment but in Malaysia too much of talking in words becomes loud and blurr!!
Move over, Wordsworth. There is a new poet in town.