Izzan's

Morning Train by Alfian Sa'at




Why do you not look at each other's

Faces? Is the scenery that arresting,

One housing estate giving birth

To yet another copy?

Or the advertisements, read and re-read,

As if behind a slogan's promise lay

Hidden promise? Answer me:

Is that consciousness rising in you,

Dissolving your fatigue like a plastic sheet

Warping in heat, or is that simply

Sleep, draining away from you

Down to your soles, to the invisible tracks

Where the dew is dying? Where electricity

Is what pushes you to the borders

Of your own loneliness, against

The vulgar loneliness of crowds


Level- Secondary 3 Express Level

I chose the above poem firstly as a tribute to Singaporean Poetry. The use of local poems has many benefits mainly due to students being able to relate better to the poem and its Singaporean context.

The poem by Alfian Saat serves as a critique of our Singaporean society as one which is always marketed politically and commercially as a social cohesive, multi racial and interacting community which through the poem’s perspective is simply hypocritical in his practice. I feel that the poem here serves many purposes in only allowing students to infer its themes but to allow them to think about the message that the poem is sending with regards to our country.

After reading the poem students will have to answer these few questions?

What is the poem about?

This serves as the basic structure for analyzing poetry. Teachers must take note that this is a primary level of inference and so students should just explain briefly what the poem is about. Alternatively, if the teacher feels that students may digress here too much due to their poem’s overwhelming context, teachers may choose instead to ask

Why does Alfian Saat title the poem “Morning Train”?

It serves to place the context of the poem in a physical aspect which is here inside an MRT train. From there students may be better placed to understand the poem. This is especially useful for lower ability or foreign students whom may not know the Singaporean context and environment as other students do.

What does the use of questions serve in the poem? How does this describe the tone of the poem?

In the poem, tone plays a very crucial role. It serves as the reason why Alfian Saat wrote the poem. Saat’s harsh and sometimes overbearing tone can be seen in his use of questions. The questions asked in the poem are not passive but rather harsh and almost aggressive in its nature. Teachers may point out the use of words such as “vulgar” as evidence to his harsh tone.

What role does this poem play with regards to the Singaporean identity?

This question has two main purposes to it. Firstly it serves as a broad perspective in which the themes of the poems can be covered under it. In order to think of the Singaporean identity, students will use this as scaffolding when inferring and defining the themes of the poem.

Secondly, this question serves a reflective role. By using what instead of a how or a why, it allows students to think about the message that the poem is saying and adopt their own opinions and views with regards to it. Students may question Saat’s themes as they may perhaps mention how through the title morning train, people tend to be more restless in the morning and therefore it does not serve adequately as a proper reason for their behavior.