For Leslie Cheung

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

For Leslie Cheung

April Fool’s Day –
everyone thought it was a bad joke
and could not, would not, believe
the announcement over television,
‘Leslie Cheung fell
from a hotel in Central.’


‘Why, Leslie, why?’


Your friends, your fans, are asking,
crying. Dressed in black,
they are laying white flowers
by the roadside where you fell.
‘You had the whole world
at your feet, so many to love you.
So many want to be you –
your talent, your face, your smile, your charm.
Why, Leslie, why?’


Were you afraid
of failure? Were you afraid
of age? The transience of love? Were you afraid
awake in the quiet of the night when the wind was whistling? Were you afraid
floating in space, dark and void between starry moments of glory? Were you afraid?

You too asked why
in the last note you wrote,
“DEPRESSION.
Thank you, all my friends …
This year has been very hard to bear.
I cannot endure it any more … In my one life,
I have not done anything evil. Why
like this”


And I remember
the look in your eyes
in some of your movies –
painful tenderness close to madness,
a longing from your soul ever
on the brink
of love, of loss, of death.

Traversing centuries, spiritualities,
between one sex and another,
life after life
of good and evil you lived, dying
to one character, living
to another, each more
violated than before.

Most of us can barely withstand
the exhaustion
even from one life,
one love,
one loss,
one death.

And you –
movie after movie,
song after song –
a few hundred lives
you must have lived,
as many loves
you must have lost.
How could you
not be tired?

How could you not want
to sing your last note,
say your last line,
on an ordinary evening
as your own self
in your favourite hotel
with memories of meals, friends and
laughter you had enjoyed?

Eleven days before you left,
I had dinner at that hotel.
I heard it had just published
a book of its special recipes,
a remembrance of its years.
Will someone burn a copy
to you leaf by leaf
from the helm of a boat,
letting them fly
white fragments into the air
in fire and smoke?

Rest, Leslie, rest.


While the wind continues to blow,
your tender music will still flow.
Walk through the tears of those you love.
Rest on the sea of white petals.

Rest, Leslie, rest.

Agnes Lam
5 April 2003, Ching Ming
Mandarin Oriental

Filed under : EDITION  - The Fifty Shrinking Years 

ARCHIVES of November , 2006