Salted Shrimp Paste

Dear friend, how do I explain why some of us here

Keep saying this paltry thing is better put out of sight?

Back alley culture it is. A few hawks hovering in the sky

The odd trees for shelter. Ponds

Has anything good ever been bred there?

They, at your insistent questioning, hang their heads in silence

They seem ashamed of their hands and feet

Worried they’d be rejected by people from abroad

They make a clean break with their poor relatives

Seek out an object of contempt, a scapegoat: 

Salted shrimp paste! They have successfully obscured their own

Backgrounds. Everyone is so presentable they have to

Offer up their made-up selves for flavouring

Wait upon an approving nod, an encouraging smile

And yet, my friend, you probably notice too, in the empty space

Of the four walls where you speak, the echoes of acquiescence

Are sometimes strong, sometimes weak, wonder whose fault it is

The delicate hands that serve you are given to nervous backtracking

Too much is concealed in those shifty eyes, too quick the smiles break

Too much is ‘understood’, speculations sour into vicious rumours

Rumours ferment, soaking everything in a purplish paste

Got it now: we are all marinated in impoverishment

Pushing the dish away, frowning, denying, protesting,

Still, they are part of the food that greet the eye

Translated by Martha Cheung. This poem appeared in Foodscape, published by Original Photograph Club, 1997. © Betty YY Ng