by Sam Cheuk
we jump into, to dissolve
ourselves from ourselves.
Under the monsoon rain,
I’m being cleansed.
What I carry with me
is still on me. What cannot
be washed away we bear
with, it follows us
for the rest of our lives.
Sam Cheuk: The phrase “be water”, a common exhortation during the 2019 protests, was inspired by Bruce Lee’s famous quotation “Be water, my friend”, which was in turn influenced by Lao Tzu’s philosophy. Used during the protests, “be water” refers to the fluidity of the movement in response to various attacks against the protesters or obstacles faced by them. When I wrote “Absolution”, I had that in mind but also the indelibility of Hongkongness; what we are stuck with us, for better or worse, or perhaps a useful forgetfulness.
Now being away from Hong Kong, I remain proud of and at the same time fearful for those writers, journalists, scholars, and others who have chosen to stay there. They know better than I do what can’t be washed out. I’d like to give a shout-out to them through my poem, albeit from a cowardly distance.
Hong Kong has always been a special place, for all of its weirdness and contradictions, and it is home to many, including myself. I guess that is what I was trying to get at in the poem but in an abstract and incomplete way—the burden of having been raised in Hong Kong, and how hard it is to let the city go, which I haven’t done a particularly good job of. I love you, Hongkongers.
Published: Wednesday 1 December 2021
Sam Cheuk is the author of Love Figures (Insomniac Press, 2011), Deus et Machina (Baseline Press, 2017), and Postscripts from a City Burning (Palimpsest Press, 2021). He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and a BA in English Literature from the University of Toronto. He is currently working on the second half of the diptych, tentatively titled Marginalia, which examines the function, execution, and generative potential behind censorship.