I Love a Broad Margin to My Life - Maxine Hong Kingston [50]
deliberately. I live nonviolently. So I shall not
kill myself by hanging or sword. If up
to me, I’ll die by helium, and be awake during
the transition, like a Tibetan, who dies with eyes open.
3. I have one more task to do—
translate and publish Father’s poems.
In the tradition of poet answering poet,
BaBa wrote in the margins of my books.
With help from a scholar and the dictionary,
I’m able to read and hereby translate
his 19th song for barbarian reed pipe:
I can hear Mong Guo playing their music.
My horse sings a sad song in concert.
Some of those strange people are singing words;
some are playing instruments that double as
weapons, flutes to arrows, lyres to crossbows.
I can hear their voices outside
great walls. They are aliens to me,
though I am among / one of them. Alone.
But BaBa did not write “I.”
The old poets did not write “I.”
Hear Mong Guo playing their music.
Horse sings a sad song …
Hear their voices outside great walls …
They are aliens …
Among them, one alone.
But how be alone unless “I”? How
be lonely with you-understood alongside?
How be American unless “I”? Crossing
languages, crossing the sky of life and death,
Daughter will help Father. I am barbarian
who sings strange words. BaBa,
we’ll show them, the academics who
can find no literature of South China.
We’ll write dialect older and more tones
than Mandarin and Beijing. BaBa’s
name-in-poetry is Lazy Old Man.
He was lucky, he got old.
He was wealthy with time,
to do nothing, to be poet.
4. Toward the end of her life, living alone,
MaMa accidently locked
herself out of the house, and spent the winter
night outside. She wrapped the old
dog blanket around herself, but could not
sleep. She walked around and around the house;
she tried lying down in various places
on the ground. She got up, and walked to the front
yard—and saw Kuan Yin on the porch.
The house looked like a resplendent altar; the porch
railings were altar rails. Kuan Yin was
watering the flowers and plants that adorned like spring,
red red green green. She stood
at the top of the stairs, and saw my mother. MaMa
knelt on the cement, and was warm with joy and beauty
and delight. Many many children came.
Kuan Yin and MaMa walked
among them, touching them on their bald heads.
When we found her, she was asleep
on the porch in a spot of morning sun.
5. I have the ability to sense love—it comes
from ancestors and family and sanghas of friends.
I am able to feel love from afar and ages ago.
6. Learn the patience to listen to music. Music
arranges time. Can’t hurry listening.
I resolve to dance the Memorial Day
Carnaval in the Mission when I am 70.
7. I will have free time. I have never
had free time. I will have time to give away.
I regret always writing, writing. I gave
my kid the whole plastic bag of marshmallows,
so I could have 20 minutes to write.
I sat at my mother’s deathbed, writing.
I did swab her mouth with water, and feel
her pliant tongue enjoy water, then harden
and die. Before I had language,
before I had stories, I wanted to write.
That desire is going away.
I’ve said what I have to say.
I’ll stop, and look at things I called
distractions. Become reader of the world,
no more writer of it. Surely, world
lives without me having to mind it.
A surprise world! When I complete
this sentence, I shall begin taking
my sweet time to love the moment-to-moment
beauty of everything. Every one. Enow.
Glossary
ah—an honorific or vocative syllable, used in front of names, like “san” following names in Japanese
ahn—peace
‘aina—land, earth
aiya—an interjection vocalized to express amazement, pain, sorrow—any emotion, large or small
aloha kākou—“May there be love including all of us.”
‘ama‘ama—mullet fish
aswang—an evil vampirelike creature living in the Philippines
‘aumākua—totem animal; a familiar; an ancestor deified in the form of an animal
auwe—an interjection vocalized to express amazement, pain, sorrow—any emotion, large or small
aw—a sound made at the end of a sentence indicating