A poem, draft I

My People

Who are you?
In San Francisco, Amsterdam, Weihai, Hefei
I walk among you, a mask
grafted onto this body.
The mask is acknowledged
by everyone
and recognised
by no one.

It speaks
many languages,
has held
many tongues,
some crudely,
others
with the slicker intonations
of a native singer.

It has straight, expensive teeth
that have begun to break down
like greyed piano keys--
something about the cloudy waters
of my father's childhood. They still chew
through raw green onion stalks, thank
God, Sinter Klaas, Buddha, Guan Yin,
Guan Gong, Deng Xiaoping...

It has lips used to rouging. Which red is best
depends on your colour, but I figured it out--nothing
too pink or blond or bloody, or else you'll be taken
for a showy wife. It was only in Hong Kong
that I was scolded: a snow-faced girl with fawn hands
in a black apron announced
"That color is not suitable
for someone like you."

It has eyes that see differences
and similarities, lined in violet shades
of sleeplessness and yearning
for things every man desires:
a strong foundation for the seemingly
interminable road, unbroken back
and resilient brow for the toil,
soft lips and feet for the rewards of the toil.

Beautiful in its completeness,
the mask has become the face
that never surfaced
in the mayhem
of adaptations.
The mask
is what lies
behind the mask:

Its pout touches food and drink with reverence;
its eyes are the clerestories of this soul;
its cheeks are where real tears
descend their quivering stair,
where my mother,
after another homecoming,
kisses me goodnight.