by Dean A. F. Gui

SHANGHAI
……for Cissy Mary Law Noodt, my grandmother

In the year of the earth Snake,
on a moist Hong Kong morning,
I nosed through a black-lacquered cabinet, Grandma,
and found it full of you:

Newspaper clippings and photo albums
smelling of nguh eh nongs and mooncakes,
smelling of a girl who escaped habitual snuffing,
smelling of your Shanghai—

You, rubbing your temples,
blushing in the black-and-whiteness of Russian jazz bands
at a table full of latecomers from the international settlements,
somewhere between smoke and sherry.

You, in high heels and anti-New Life Movement hair,
purse under your arm, ceremonial rope in your hand,
guiding the Hirzai colt and jockey through a mass of sweating Chinese,
some in cheung-sams, others in fedoras and Irish tweed.

You, slender and oriental, standing along Ya-fei Lo
with a pink-skinned husband and a solemn-eyed daughter,
eyes turned towards a land of perfumed harbours,
where the Occupiers and Revolutionaries will force you to go.

You, in Edith Head white gown and elbow-high gloves,
walking down a catwalk in your Zhou Xuan-esque  beauty,
in a room of tight-lipped, ex-pat servicemen’s wives,
looking at anything but you.

You, frowning at salty fish and ginger,
yelled away by hawkers, tripping in your steps,
wondering where the ingredients are to knup-knup,
a dish that makes sense to no-one else.

You, watching The Young and the Restless in your make-believe opium den,
squatting on your fold-up bed, puffing Dunhill lights,
remembering Portuguese boys,
waiting for buried friends to play mahjong.

And you, staring into a Yoksang hand-mirror,
fussing with your frizzled hair,
powdering your yellow-white face
and smiling at the shadows behind you.

VORTEX
….. for the late Alfred Noodt, my grandfather

It was very hot that day, Grandpa,
fans churning, incense smoke swelling,
Chinese ushers carelessly joking behind your coffin,
some priest droning on,
languid, over your broken jaw,
your metallic eyes.

And I wondered,
slumped in my front row chair,
what was the colour of your eyes?

I remember fragments
me at the Brunswick, strange and brown,
staring up and down your white skin,
your Macanese cronies silent and curious,
the ten dollars you handed me as
you sipped your ninth cup of Lipton tea
made from the same tea bag,
the Greenspot I ordered with a hotdog and fries,
then slipping quietly into the colonial heat.

In the shadows of your long forgotten home
on twenty-something Moody Road
an amah whose name is forgotten would forget me,
and while you and your estranged daughter
whispered to each other in the darkness of your sarcophagus
I would escape to the back of the kitchen, into a garden
full of gum-gut trees and yellow trumpets,
drowning myself in the serenade of cicadas.

Did you think of me in those final breathless seconds,
writhing in the arms of a guilty daughter who never felt as close to you
as when she comforted you that first and last time?

Your eyes became nebulous skies
as you visited my nightmares for years afterwards,
each night suspended above me,
as if you too wondered what answers I found
in the vortex of stars that never ended.

Victoria Harbour drank your ashes,
a murky, never-ending necropolis.

That day it was forgiving outside.
People whispered, dozed, gazed far across the salty air,
promises of new life under the glistening sun
as the ferry pulsated along the sighing waters.

And I wondered, Grandpa, if you were ever really there.