A visual representation of "Homecoming" by David McKirdy
MAN Cheuk Hei Jack
HKFYG Lee Shau Kee College
In my painting, I capture the moment that the Chinese boy wakes up to find that he is sleeping on the pillow of the foreigner next to him.
He rises from his chair, dropping the pillow carelessly.
The blanket, which also belongs to the foreigner, is still hanging on the little boy’s head.
Interested in his neighbour’s appearance, the little boy initiates a conversation with the foreigner.
In this entry, I choose the colours of green and blue to paint the cabin of the airplane in order to express the quiet and cold atmosphere.
However, the sunlight from one of the windows lights up the Chinese boy and foreigner whose skins appear beige.
The warm colour tone highlights the two main characters and helps to express the foreigner’s sense of happiness of coming back to his home city – Hong Kong.
Homecoming
Flying home from the land of my birth
rituals performed, eulogy delivered
orphaned and pensive.
A little Chinese boy sleeps
with his head on my knee
trusting and innocent
I slide my pillow under him
and spread a blanket
as his mother snores beside him.
Later we chat
“Uncle, are you a foreigner?”
“Yes, born in Scotland.”
“Why can you speak Cantonese?”
“I am a Hong Kong man now.”
“How old are you?”
“55, and you?”
“I am 5 years old.”
Just a year older than me
when I left
traveling towards a new life.
50 years absence has made me
a venerable uncle
with an inscrutable Western smile
heading back to my Chinese home
David McKirdy
“Homecoming” was published in Eight Hong Kong Poets edited by David McKirdy and Peter Gordon, p.119. Copyrights© 2015 by Chameleon Press. Reprinted by permission of Chameleon Press.