Secret Family Recipes

Literary Review, Summer, 2004 by Leung Ping-Kwan

Secret Family Recipes

   the swirling flicker begins from a lamp
   an always unsustainable accident at your ear
   some say you're hot-tempered but you're already
   no longer that; people from later on
   boiled that dish dry, forgot
   the original theme, as we stirred
   we slowly lost ourselves
   too vague, too weak, too compromised
   impossible to arrive at the shape of dawn-to-dusk thought
   from beyond a mediocre cuisine we keep on wanting
   to recover those lost notes

   no matter where we go we always carry with us
   from our youth the aromas that drifted through
   lanes and alleys from big colonial houses after school
   from the faraway town, renewing our desires
   the comforting embrace we repeatedly lose
   grown up, the subtly sweet and bitter sourness
   disclosed in unavoidable depression
   the secret escape route whose direction is unknown
   eternal secret, stuck between the teeth like
   granny's paradoxical fishcakes:
   an undifferentiable blend of sweet and salty

   if you have the best bacalhu, if you have
   portuguese olive oil, strong enough and mellow enough
   can everything then be magically reproduced?
   the dinners our godmothers cooked for us on Sundays

   in every attic, behind every closed curtain and
   shutter inside southern European-style windows
   in these dusty yesterdays, what was so subtly shining?
   sisters recorded it, kith and kin noted it down
   and the paper slowly and gradually faded
   impossible to hold on to these mysterious rites
   performed with such wizardly perfection

   remember the flavours of aniseed and nutmeg
   those balichao stir-fries really mouth-watering
   remember granny used to cook a mysterious dish
   (neighbors all knew in the kitchen she'd do her stuff)
   the aroma was a lingering one, but after she was gone
   there was no one who could blend the same flavours again
   our nickname was muchi-muchi, and after school
   whoever lost a bet invited the others to eat cha-cha sweet bean
   soup we grew up between meals, faintly remembering
   grown-ups had shown us a mysterious album
   we just mix food in the pan, not knowing if we can reclaim those
   riches

Translated from the Chinese by Brian Holton

Editor's Note: Leung Ping-kwan's poems are from an exhibition "2, 3 things about Hong Kong" held at City Gallery, The City University of Hong Kong in November 2003.