Two words
or “How I was brought to tears by a total stranger”
One of the handouts at the recent “Night of the Living Text” International Readings was a booklet of poems by a Taiwanese. Flipping through it, I saw that it was in both English and Chinese. For some reason, I found myself trying to make out the Chinese characters. And felt pleased that I was able to recognise quite a few, and enough to make sense of the sentences. The Chinese tuition my parents had sent me to all those years ago has not been wasted.
I came to the last page and started reading the last poem which was in English. Following which, I glanced at the one before it and saw that it was the same poem, but in Chinese. I continued reading the Chinese version and when I came to the final words in the last line in the first verse, my eyes welled up.
來世 (the future)
The first and only time I’d heard those words had been at my niece’s farewell last March. It was the final moment, the coffin was being shut as the priests chanted words to the effect that we had the privilege of having her with us in this life (今世) and maybe we will have the privilege again in the next life (來世).
In this very public place, with people standing and chatting around me, I found myself feeling very alone and very sad, as I remembered those last days and also all the things I never did that I wished I’d done for her.
I shut my eyes and put my knuckles up to rub away the tears, hoping they won’t flow down my face. It didn’t work. Out came my hanky to soak them up. After a while, I managed to control myself and to focus on the evening of readings ahead of me.
It proved to be a very enjoyable set of readings, and I was glad to be there. Then came the last reader of the evening, Ke Hua Chan, a Taiwanese who’d been added at the last minute. Yes, the same Taiwanese whose booklet of poems had been handed out earlier that evening. He came to the microphone and said he would make it short as it was getting late and that in his profession as a doctor, it was his duty to tell us we shouldn’t sleep so late. And then he said he would read from the last page of the booklet … in fact, the very last poem.
He read the English version, struggling to pronounce some of the words, but nevertheless giving a fine reading. He followed it with a reading of the Chinese version (in the Mandarin dialect) and for the second time that evening, my eyes welled up. Was that it? No. He’d earlier told us the poem had been set to music, and to finish the evening, we were treated to the musical version.
Since that night, whenever I thought of what happened, I would feel tears coming to my eyes. But in the privacy of my own space, I do not have to stop them from flowing.
