Poems on Death in the Absence of Piety

Poems on

Death in the Absence of Piety

2022 – 2024

Tian Yu (Blue 藍) Lam | May 2026

There is, intentionally, no video documentation of Blue Lam’s performance Death in the Absence of Piety. There are only words — poetical words that open the imagination, that let us see what has been, though never exactly as it was. Difference becomes possibility: the performance lives on in those who did not witness it, yet can still picture it — a picture emerging from the words, lingering in the in-between, suspended between past presence and future unfolding. 
Blue’s poem becomes its own form of documentation, one that moves beyond the certainty of images or videos. It carries the essence of the performance in rhythm and breath, in feeling rather than fact. It asks not for interpretation, but for sensation — bodily, immediate, alive — and it invites each reader to paint their own visions in response, to envision the performance anew within themselves.

Prelude

Children of the soil

Foetal mycelium

Embryonic rooting

There is death in the detritus


Children of the sun

Soles singed

Offering pearls of brine

Rotting, sticky and sweet


Children of the ineffable seas

Her heaving breath

Blinking cargo stars

Such porosity in our young souls

Children of the equatorial bloom

Folly in the foliage

Humid haze

Cognitive birth


Children of the monsoon tears

Humming thunder

The rainfall imbue our sins

Children of the sublime

Coming home

Their germination gerund

Pious to none

Filial to fear


Interlude

In the absence of piety

I mourn

I grieve

I say goodbye to all I know

In the absence of piety

I cry

I weep

I put it all to rest

In the absence of piety

I lose everything

For all I have is nothing

In the absence of piety

Everything seems meaningless

I crave for home
I love all beings

天下有始, 以为天下母。

(The world has a beginning, and it arose from the mother of the world.) – 道德经


In the absence of piety

Yet I still tether myself

Umbilical familiarity

The land holds me

In the absence of piety

A blade of grass pushes against the earth

That difficulty births beings in the material world

In the absence of piety
I am nothing

For I cannot fathom the mother

For I cannot fathom the sky, nor the earth

In the absence of piety

The heaven-being exists

有物混成，先天地生。寂兮寥兮，独立而不改，

周行而不殆，可以为天地母。吾不知其名，强字之曰道，强为之名曰大。

(There was something undefined and complete, coming into existence before Heaven and Earth.

How still it was and formless, standing alone, and undergoing no change, reaching everywhere and in no danger (of being exhausted)! It may be regarded as the Mother of all things.) – 道德经


In the absence of piety

I leave it to rest

For I do not know its name


In the absence of piety

There is death in the detritus

Such porosity in our young souls


Postlude

I hold no guilt and no shame. I do not grovel or beg for forgiveness from God, Heaven or the Earth. 

I have everything yet nothing. I will always seek abundance within contentment. 

Regardless of its nature, I attempt to hold all things with tenderness and strength. I long for things to pass time with me. 

Regardless of my own shortcomings, I attend to making, processing, practicing and thinking. I attest to these difficulties. 
My roots wilt when they are dry, my petals bloom when they are nourished. The change is what moves my being. 


What I have found is the ultimate passing of time. The passing of time is the universal constant.


玄之又玄，衆妙之門。

(Xuan and again xuan, gate to all mysteries.) - 道德經


The recursivity, the oppositional continuity - 陰 (yin) and 陽 (yang). This is the logic – again, and again. 

I stand, tethered to the material, between Heaven and Earth. A living creature unknowing of truth, unknowing of life or death, unknowing of good or bad.

Birth is a struggle, living is passing time. Death is easy.






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Short Description of the poem: 

Post-performance writings for Death in the Absence of Piety, 2024 (Incomplete)

Blue 藍

Durational Performance

2.4 x 2.4m platform, tattoo equipment, 
hand-carved soapstone「乾」, 「坤」,「屯」seals, jungle soil


Performed at the Goldsmiths, University of London Undergraduate Fine Art Degree Show in London, United Kingdom from 13 - 17 June 2024



It is an ode to life, death and the passing of time. 
It is an ode to Heaven, Earth and the material creatures between them. 
It is an ode to the difficulty of growth that comes with the passage of time.