Question of Faith

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Was it within the labyrinth of pews

that you’d first found me? Perhaps,

while I sat, trying to figure out how
Father, Son and Spirit could be One.
For the other pupils, the small chapel
was a playhouse for pranks and racing.
But you’d singled me out, the quiet one.
And with no drama—only the felt tip

of a 4pm ray of sun. Still, were you not

at all chaffed when I, after examining
cisterns by the entrance, wondered
if mosquitoes breed in holy water?
Lapsing from the Catholic upbringing

in my primary school, I have since 

been baptised by a Presbyterian pastor
in front of a more minimalist cross,
but never stopped praying it was faith,
alone, that murdered all my questions.

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Hymn

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I. 

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Towards the end of the service 

during Grandfather’s wake, the pastor 

led us in music, as we walked around 

the open coffin. I’d clean forgotten 

about the songs we sang that day, until 

I heard again this album by Johnny Cash, 

My Mother’s Hymn Book: 

 

Never grow old, 

where we’ll never grow old. 

In a land where we’ll never grow old. 

 

Is the land anything like Dyess, Arkansas, where 

Cash grew up, working the family cotton fields, 

singing along with his parents and siblings—

despite the Great Depression and, in 1937,

the floodwater five feet high and rising? 

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II.

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Back in April 22, 1914, when James Cleveland Moore, Sr. 

first composed the song, he was thinking of his father

leading the singing in their home church in Draketown, 

Georgia. His father’s voice failing, because of age.  
 

III.

 

Recently there have been too many funeral wakes 

for me to attend, and again this song floats into mind.

 

Never grow old, 

where we’ll never grow old. 

 

The man in black, already departed, 

his voice deep and gravelly against 

the vibration of guitar strings, 

is singing with a youthful lilt.

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Taliesin

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In memory of Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959)
 

Pardon me if I am to you 

an “inferior desecrator”. I do 

what I can with hallowed space 

 

And this abode, for all 

it’s worth, is my refuge. 

 

Outside this fortress 

in the sky, I view the transfiguration 

of clouds through stained windows 

 

A silver prairie, rolling

above all the chaos, as 

my city burns. 

 

I think not of the Mayan temple 

of sacrifice you’d advocated. Mine 

is a crypt of no theatre. A retreat that 

takes on the memory of an antiquated 

Cambridge dorm I once stayed a week, 

or the illusion of a Cornwall B&B (sans

waves) or a Unitarian church you 

might have built. I breathe in silence.

 

Here, I worship I read I dream I write. 

I stuff an in-progress manuscript 

in a prominent place, in case of force majeure. 

 

Am I ready to get burnt to be reborn,

continuous with the land?

 

This is my Taliesin, walls of no stucco 

or render, marking out my 915 square feet 

that enclose me at the centre of cardinal 

directions. This is home. My last bastion 

against a world off-kilter, defending 

what defines me—my love transmutable 

only by the whitest flames.

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Author's Note:

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"Question of Faith" was first published in Tumasik: Contemporary Writing from Singapore (Autumn Hill Books, International Writing Program at the University of Iowa and the National Arts Council of Singapore, 2009) before appearing in the author’s poetry collection, From Within the Marrow (Firstfruits Publications, 2010).