Chinatowns, by Boey Kim Cheng
Over and over you study the menus, the recipes, the difficult names
of herbs and roots, the cures that awaken a forgotten hunger.
You scour these Chinatowns of the mind, translating them
like sutras Xuan Zang fetched from India, testing ways
return might be possible against these these homesick inventions,
trace the traveller's alien steps across borders, and in between
discover how transit has a way of lasting, the way these Chinatowns
grew out of not knowing to return or to stay, and then became home.
of herbs and roots, the cures that awaken a forgotten hunger.
You scour these Chinatowns of the mind, translating them
like sutras Xuan Zang fetched from India, testing ways
return might be possible against these these homesick inventions,
trace the traveller's alien steps across borders, and in between
discover how transit has a way of lasting, the way these Chinatowns
grew out of not knowing to return or to stay, and then became home.