Hokkien

My tongue loses you, inch by inch,
speaking another. Broken flower,
you are not official, not found
in programmes, bookkeeping,
blueprints, memorandums,
though I hear you in wet markets
haggling over prices of vegetables.

Ink of my pen does not contain you,
but spill another learnt as a child,
reading Wordsworth. Great-grandfather
found solace in common speakers
when he worked as a coolie,
but they used you for secret rituals,
kneeling, brewing loose incantations
before glowing altars in dark chambers.
 
Relic, you are now an emblem
of secret societies, a house
breeding cobwebs, where everyone
packs up and leave. Your tiles
are mouldy, discarded, broken,
falling everyday in disuse,
seldom taken seriously,
unless someone wielding a parang
darts the vehement obscenity.

I have no more use for you.
Yet, I do not know what to say
to my grandparents.