Oratorio for three voices

I carried from Malaysia no regret
to perform a common family duty,
before love is cartooned worthy of honour,
before lawyers bind grief into forms
where careful records make up for absence.
Watch these 宝贝 crawl closer: coo for gifts,
for candies, bounces, and kisses they need,
for all that is found in 奶奶’s presence.
The heat fades as soon as we go outside—
Toronto winters will store eight more years
in this agar frame before I finish
in this frost-bitten 广东 exile.
To have them bring 冬瓜汤 to my bed
is the one reward, if any is needed.

I carried from Taiwan nothing I needed:
my degree decoration above the bed,
finding that multicultural meant exile,
finding a clear English ceiling not absent.
Here, my popo will embark and honour
from across an ocean and landmass our need
for two incomes until the better years,
for protection from a-mas hired outside
the family, when Ying can take the duty
over from her xifan-stirring presence.
The only hope is she will not regret
the choice to give our one family this gift—
with five xiongdi in Kuala Lumpur,
is our frailty so bold she must finish?

I carried my lunwen, finally finished,
past gaggles of stifled giggles, informed
Western scholarship was within my gifts,
Dongfang stories imprinting greater presence.
With doctor-lawyer ambitions exiled,
exchanged for a wall of colonial honours
decorating what vanity needed,
decorating peers’ and family’s absence,
I’ll return too late, an outsider
digesting 鲍鱼哥哥 brought as luxury,
gaze where 母亲在床边跪下了,
看大舅义不容辞的责任.
My Goethe-Bach visions, disdainful of years,
will not divine what regret I carry.