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| The Good Carpentry Blog |
give brief discussion about thispoem. the theme is about relationship?
for my old amah
by Wong Pui Nam
_____________
to most your dying seems distanst
outside the palings of our concern.
only to you the fact was real
when the flame caught among the final brambles
of your pain.And lying there
in this cubicle, on your trestle,
over the old newspapers and spittoon,
your face bears the waste of terror
at the crumbling of your body walls.
the moth fluttering against the electric bulb,
and onthe wall your old photographs,
do not know your going. i do not know
whwn it has wrenches open the old wounds.
when branches snapped in the dark
you would have had a god among the trees
make us a journey of your going.
your palm crushed the childs tears from my face.
now this room will become your going, brutal
in the discarded, the biscuits tins
and neat piles of your dresses.
I answred this question from "siaful a" about a week ago.
Here's my 2-cents on the poem. First, the title itself is a give-away. the word "amah" is the chinese term for wet nurse, maid, or nanny. The poem is dedicated by the author to someone who took care of him/her when the author was a child (as evidenced by the 2nd to the last line of the poem).
The first stanza basically talks about how the death of a servant does not seem so tragic to the family in whose service the servant was. The death occured inside the maid's quarters (the room was small and had little furnishing. the poem talks about old newspapers and a spittoon .ie., a container for spit, some discarded combs, biscuit tins, and a neat pile of dresses [no clothes closet]; and it was only lit with a naked electric bulb; but was however, decorated with old photographs on the walls). The death apparently was a very painful one (not one that was peaceful; in other words, she didnt die in her sleep, but suffered an enduring sickness of some sort). The sad thing is that the maid knew that she was dying and seemed terrified by the thought of dying alone (line: your face bears the waste of terror at the crumbling of your body's walls).
The second stanza talks about how no one knew or cared about her death (not even the people in the old photographs, may be of some relatives of the maid).
The word "it" in the second sentence of the second stanza, however, has an obscure antecedent. I am not sure if it refers to the old photographs opening some old, forgotten hurt. I am not also sure about what the author meant about branches snapping (death perhaps?).
On the overall the poem is a "tribute" to the life of a faithful servant who took care of the author and stayed with his/her family until the end of the servant's life.
It's a beautiful poem. Hope I was able to do justice to it.
