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by Heng Siok Tian
Airwell
in the centre of a baba home
shows me
a mosaic of blue.
Like a pre-hologram,
glimpsing an early sky:
I see amahs in samfoos
in their time and space
squatted here,
washing, working within the marbled tiles,
for big master and mistress who slept above,
for little masters they would sayang and love..
Where was their half of the sky?
next to babas and nonyas twirling, whirling with a gramophone in an upstairs dance studio
which became the play den of fruit bats when owners upgraded,
now
layered with droppings, so decomposed they become
earth.
.
To first lose the turquoise of mosaic-blue, then the shapes of carved zodiac animals,
to leave them with the wings of bats,
to touch again these losses
as I linger on the airwell,
so sayang,
sayang. |