~5more days~

5more days,I'm going back home..
Felt so surreal..
Excited in fact..
2 years just passed by like that..
I can almost forgot how does Char Kuey Teow tastes like..
I can almost forgot how I used to frequent Mid Valley..
Almost forgot my late night mamak sessions..

I suddenly remembered this


si tenggang's homecoming

i

the physical journey that i traverse
is the journey of the soul,
transport of the self from a fatherland
to a country collected by sight and mind.
the knowledge the sweats from it
is stranger's experience,
from one who had learnt to see, reflect
and choose between
the challenging actualities.

ii

its true i have growled at my mother and
grandmother,
but only after having told them my predicament
that they have never brought to consideration
the wife that i began to love in my loneliness,
in the country that alienated me,
they enveloped in their pre-judgement.
i have not entirely returned, i know,
having been changed by time and place.
coarsed by problems
estranged by absence.

iii

but look.
i have brought myself home,
seasoned by faith.
broadened by land and language,
i am no longer afraid of the oceans
of the differences between people,
no longer easily snared
no words of ideas

the journey was a loyal teacher,
who was never tardy
in explaining cultures and variousness.
look i am just like you.
still Malay,
sensitive to what
i believe is good,
and more ready to understand

than my brothers.
the contents of these boats are yours too,
because i have returned.

iv

travel makes me
a seeker who does not take
what is given without sincerity
or that which demands payment from
beliefs.
the years at sea and in coastal state
have thought me to choose,
to accept only those tested by
comparison,
or that which matches the roads of my
ancestors,
which returns me to my village
and its completeness.

v

i've learnt
the ways of the rude,
to hold actuality in a new logic,
debate with hard and loud facts.
but i too
have humanity, respecting
man and life.

vi

i am not a new man,
not very different
from you;
the people and cities
of coastal ports
thought me not to brood
over a foreign world,
suffer difficulties
or fear possibilities.

i am you,
freed from the village,
its soils and ways,
independent, because
i have found myself.

How real and nostalgic..