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WONG PHUI NAMObitIt is as thin smoke blown in from a firefed from the edges of a distant field.Word of your having died settles as hazefor an afternoon; what remains of it,of you, in me will soon disperse with changein the day's mood, the next turn of the wind.Even the hunger that could not over a life-timeburn itself out in the gut will now recede;the fine ash settling, leaves in clear aira nothingness. Over your seventy odd yearsyou worked that terrible maw - a birdforever in flight, flinging itselfinto an opening void, between grey earth,grey sky, resolved into one great devouring eyefor nothing else but the world's insufficiencyof insects, grub and grain. You were consumedand made over into its living heat.I wonder if, in that final morningwhen the walls of your small room began to swim,dissolve into the darkness and time itselfappeared ravenously to open upand set itself upon you, your single eyewas not still locked on the struggling worm,or did your very bones cry out for weariness,for all the years that were spent on addingto what seemed to be breaking out anew,blue sulphurous fires that would soon sweep the heart.As smoke blown in ... when you were toldFather had died in the night, you called outto us from inside of your first floor window,"Who's to pay for the funeral?" You came.You were in time for sealing of the coffin.You, who were so little involved, Uncle,had managed to put it in your termsa little of what each of us could well have said.14WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989