Home
One Day I Will Find It
I'll follow the smell of food: fried ikan bilis, roast lamb, mangoes;
or the sound of water touching down on sand, stones, mud.
Perhaps the code for entry will be in braille
and I must stand in a dark room at midnight, weeping
and running my fingers over two stone tablets.
It will be in my mouth—a thin wafer of honey,
the bitter salt taste of my husband's sweat.
I will see it, I'm sure, yellow as wattle in winter
and brown as the grass under snow.
It will be a skyscraper, fifty storeys tall.
It will be the smallest, most picturesque cottage.
I will live there alone and with everyone I love.
No children are raped there.
No one eats while others go hungry.
No lying awake, wondering which woman or child
in what sweatshop has made these pyjamas I wear,
or the sheets on the bed, or the rug on the floor.
I will not have to lock the door.
Without Warning
An explosion of light. A word that is itself.
A word to possess me. An image so bright and complete
it can only be seen with eyes shut tight. As in prayer.
As in sleep – a dream that outlives reality.
An image to enter me like a knife, like a nail,
hammering in till it finds its reply, taking my body
like breath, like the strong kiss of a bridegroom,
like death, in all its finality.
Someone is at work in me,
translating this corrupt language of my body,
the dark, bitter words of my heart
into the pure language of that other place
where every word is a radiant arrival
that draws me across the threshold
and claims me as its own.
A Place to Return To
Bed, toilet, kitchen. Exposed brick walls.
This worn grey carpet, toys all over the floor
reminding me that I have left the life of the mind
for this. “Home!”, the children call out in the car,
“We're going home!” They must mean this place.
I consider my father, born into a single room
that housed his whole family. And this –
running water, six sets of taps, a fridge, a washing machine,
enough books for a dowager empress, or medieval king.
If there must be a place, a tent for the body
on this earth, I'll take this one, with the blue plumbago
waving defiantly through the natives, the climbing white jasmine
rampant over the fence, and the mulberry tree, that foreigner
so completely at home, growing taller each year.
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First published in Contemporary Asian Australian Poets, edited by Adam Aitken, Kim Cheng Boey & Michelle Cahill. Puncher & Wattman Poetry, 2013, pp. 148-9. Available here.
This poem is currently on the NSW HSC syllabus.
To read a Chinese translation of "Home" by scholar Leei Wong, click here.
this is quite lovely
Thanks Stephen!
touching poetry
Thanks Steph!
My fiance, who is a high school English teacher, read this poem aloud to me today. I instantly started bawling when I read “without warning”. I was lucky enough to be able to have a divine encounter with God once while praying the Rosary and nothing else I’ve read has described what it felt like to know Him so perfectly except your poem. To me, all three of these poems are describing Heaven, just in different forms. The first reminds me of my home in the Philippines, but without the trials and tribulations my loved ones face there. The second, my home in God. The third, my home now in Australia and the one that I will share with my partner, after having moved to one of the most liveable countries in the world.
Hi Amy,
Thanks so much for letting me know that this poem spoke to you. I write these things and put them out into the world, not knowing if they will mean anything to anyone. I am so grateful to know that you share something of these experiences of being a migrant here in Australia, and of knowing God. How wonderful to have had such a powerful divine encounter. I hope and pray that you will always feel at home, here and in the life to come.
rather moving poetry
Thanks Carter!