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Possibly: they were threats masked as requests. But people know this. They can’t go against the king. So they accept his ‘request’

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to fight on horses using a long stick

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very important and needing immediate

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Fake & powerless threats -> can’t do much

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- Won a schloarship from the Goethe-Institut to peruse German
- Won National University of Singapore Poetry Writing/Creative Pose competition
- Singapore-born Australian. He is Chinese descent
- Born in 1965, currently 53 years old
Poet, teacher

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They had to go back to fight and didn’t want to but had to and they lose the will to

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Seems like he is bringing up a mock of pride. He talks of how they wear their armour which is usually a symbol of strength bravery and pride and now he says it’s rusted and how bad it is and hints at how he is forced. Like kids on a carousel

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Talks about medieval times, maybe the poet is trying to say that the system is outdated?

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Stanza 2-3 same 6 times

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“ we will keep charging up the same hills... same forests til we are too old”

It’s repetition of events shows that it’s the same. Nothing changes. It’s the same system and can be seen as old fashioned. The people are getting too old and can’t do it anymore so there’s no point and they should change this tradition and repetition.

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Religious connotation
Religion = not real
∴ Pointless

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with creaking bones

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Start with calm and end with fustration

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The rituals are dull and boring

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weapons we were

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Doing it over and over again

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Since he is talking about the Greek myth where you just point a rock up a hill and watch it roll back it tells ur he thinks going back every year is also annoying hard and tedious like the myth. Where he is asked to do something by a large power - in this case his king and he can’t go against the king, but he doesn’t wanna do it either

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Waste of time

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“We will...” in third stanza, sounds determined

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commanders are mean. roar like a lion because singapore

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Shrinking gear

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Time again for the annual joust, the regular fanfare
a call to arms, the imperative letters stern
as clarion notes, the king’s command, upon
the pain of court-martial, to tilt
at the old windmills. With creaking bones
and suppressed grunts, we battle-weary knights
creep to attention, ransack the wardrobes
for our rusty armour, tuck the pot bellies
with great finesse into the shrinking gear
and with helmets shutting off half our world,
report for service. We are again united
with sleek weapons we were betrothed to
in our active cavalier days.

We will keep charging up the same hills, plod
through the same forest, till we are too old,
too ill-fitted for life’s other territories.
The same trails will find us time and again,
and we quick to obey, like children placed
on carousels they cannot get off from, borne
along through somebody’s expensive fantasyland,
with an oncoming rush of tedious rituals, masked threats
and monsters armed with the same roar.

In the end we will perhaps surprise ourselves
and emerge unlikely heroes with long years
of braving the same horrors
pinned on our tunic fronts.
We will have proved that Sisyphus is not a myth.
We will play the game till the monotony
sends his lordship to sleep.
We will march the same paths till they break
onto new trails, our lives stumbling
onto the open sea, into the daybreak.

Kim Boey Cheng (1965-)