Malacca Grandmother by Robert Yeo (Sheena)

Malacca Grandmother by Robert Yeo

Grandmother, departures
Such as yours
And your brother to Southampton
Snap something in me
I don’t know what.
It is not that you won’t come back
Neither that your brother may not return
Nor that more than a person
An age has passed, of whom you were
The sole remaining representative

Could it be that I realize now
How your going has severed
(Something I could not then acknowledge)
Relationship to a family rich
In history, name and wealth
But aloof and strangely antique
Like the silver kerosang their nyonyas wear?
Your generation trespassing on mine
Left me with two tongues that I sputter
Recurrent memories of the towkayneo
Who would only sell me things in Teochew,
And an aggressive sense of modernity.

On Heeren Street,
The past peels in paint,
Even on this midday
Twilight is trapped in long, grey interiors.
Do the womenfolk here
Still grow up
In kitchens and in bedrooms?
Is there a house here which is the source
Of my indifferent Malay
And my Hokkien splutter?

Grandma, you have broken now
The tenuous links between
The Tans and the Yeos
Malacca and Singapore.

I guess
That is what
Departure’s about.