These poems about places were originally posted on the AsianVoices Website (1997-2006), which featured poetry and fiction by young Asian writers. As the AsianVoices website started in 1997, the year during which China regained sovereignty over Hong Kong, several of the poems deal with this historic event.
Sagami Bay
Above the surf’s mute crash
these teardrops of light
roll down the shrouded dome of night.
The black bay mirrors their sandy schemes
to where high and low are merged beyond
in a distant sea of dreams.
You raise your head above the waves
of heat, come into focus,
and speak.
But your voice fades in this dream’s daydream:
I imagine sculptures,
crafted by the hot dry wind that prowls these desert canyons,
turning life to dust, driving flecks of sand from gnarled bones,
until sound returns
morning light floods my eyes,
and rib and ears again turn to stone.
~Paul Corrigan (Hong Kong)
The photograph of Sagami Bay at the top of this page is from an exhibit of photographs by Sato Jun Ichi called Water’s edge. Describing his photographs, Sato writes: “the line of the ‘water’s edge’ separates the land from water, but it is not a fixed form. It is endlessly complex and fractalistic”. The photograph appeared in AsianVoices with the writer’s permission.
Easter Island
Hundreds of Stone Giants
Located on a mysterious island
If you want to know its story
Imagination is necessary
~Kwok Sze-Nga, Leung Chi-yin, Wong Yi-Ling and Yeung Ying-tsim of Shung Tak Secondary School (Hong Kong)
This poem was written as part of the Cloth Puzzle poem writing activity organised by university students on behalf of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival).
Shenzen
People’s eyes are voracious and small
Men wear suits wherever and whenever
Children sit on the road in their beggar identity
Little bellies of young ladies walk down the streets
With cyprian smiles
Debauchery is the form of their life?
Money is me that can buy a smile
I can see and smell the air?
Grey in light and orange in night and smelling of petrol
~Kama Tsoi (Hong Kong)
Harbourside II
The souls of the Hong Kong dead, of sad families
of the lost who left for the golden west,
they throng in once-upon-a-time Western Market
in vanished godowns, on old quays buried by new streets
and yearn still for the slap of oily waves
and sit calmly here in salt sea air
of haunts unseen, unheeded by the new.
Some remember the Russian ship carrying Chekov,
a doctor wanting to see it all,
the progress, the trade,
a museum and new roads,
a railway up to the peak.
In the miracle woked by the English far from tidy suburbs
and by Chinese fleeing chaos, repeated rape of the motherland,
to build something new in so few generations,
some remember the hearding of beaten prisoners
of the arrogant taking of woman to be used
and the goading of men chained through the hands for spitting.
Ghosts throng and thrash in the nets of memory,
trawled again and again.
Ghosts are thrown back into the waves of the dying sea
of the living who ride the here and now.
Those who grow rich will build houses,
with gardens and moon gates
where ghosts will dance when the stars hide behind clouds
where ghosts will walk on a line a ferryman throws ashore.
(despite the farce of empire’s end
the greed filled transition of power
and smug new-rich and self satisfied foreigners
from an adolescent world)
while city and habour and islands
gleam in the bright tide-race of thought.
~Andrew Parkin (Hong Kong)
This poem is from the collection entitled Hong Kong Poems and appeared on the AsianVoices site with permission from the publisher (Ronsdale Press)
Night/City
Hong Kong residents waiting for the fireworks on the eve of the handover (photo by longzijun)
Night.
The sound of pouring rain.
Rain. The sound of night.
The way ahead is dark,
clouded with our fear, with our love.
Voices,
unable to express their feelings.
Hands,
reaching out to touch the night,
struggling, to feel the warmth.
Eyes,
closing, yearning,
to see beauty,
in the night of the city
for eternity.
Wishing they were laughing.
Wishing they were crying.
They dance themselves into oblivion,
to the beat of each raindrop.
That night, they dream a fairy tale.
And it goes like this:
seeds of love
between the arranged marriage
of two strange hearts bloom over night.
Happily ever after they live.
Waking up the next morning, beside
the unfamiliar sound of breathing,
they embrace with new desire
what they love and know best:
~Nicole Bai (USA)
“This poem expresses some of my feelings about the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China (or my feelings during ‘the last night’ and those inspired by Anthony Wong’s rendition of the song, ‘Last Night’).”
a child named hong kong
Stand up, Child,
Your Mum and Dad divorced.
The man you relied upon,
Now has shut his doors;
The woman you once feared,
Now supposed to be adored.
Your existence a disgrace,
The bitter fruit of rape;
From Mum Dad took you away,
No doubt he’s the one she hates.
You thrive and shine,
You’re Mum and Dad’s pride.
Dad says it’s the way you’re brought up,
Mum says her genes can’t hide.
You do things in Dad’s way,
Mum cries that way’s no good
Though many thought that you’d grown-up,
You’re Mum’s child still, it’s understood.
~Zita Yu (Hong Kong)
After the Handover
To the British, it was a handover,
a gracious act to remake history.
To the Chinese, a century and half over,
it is hui gui, two words for return.
The resentful call it a takeover -
China buying stocks and property.
Others rename it a changeover,
hoping for better, not for worse.
However felt, the ceremony’s over,
without diplomatic incidents
or terrorist attacks as rumoured,
no riots, street fires or blood shed,
but dragons dancing at East Tamar,
concerts playing in the Coliseum,
legend floats in music round the harbour,
fireworks, lasers a rain-hung sky to light
the end of British administration,
the birth of Special Administration,
transition above imagination.
Perhaps
the questions would now stop -
but they have not.
They used to say -
Why do you stay?
Why didn’t you go
like others I know?
Now they’re asking -
So what’s happening?
How does it feel -
two systems for real?
Here is an answer -
would it but last.
Whatever the time,
wherever the place,
whoever governs,
I’m not afraid.
This is my city.
This is my home.
God is still here.
I’m not alone.
I own so little
in any case.
What’s there to fear
for me to stay?
So little to give.
So much to live.
A job or two
I ought to do.
~Agnes Lam (Hong Kong)
we all get wet in the rain
To the South of the red,
On a verdant bed,
Lies a city of ivory towers.
Where dragon and ghost,
Rule hillside and coast,
And heeded are magical powers.
To the South of the red,
The traveller is led,
By sirens of fortune and fame.
But first you must give,
The life that you live,
And surrender to them your name.
To the South of the red,
I’ve heard it said,
That wealth is the outright winner.
From the corporate sage,
To the man in the cage,
One of these the outright sinner.
To the South of the red,
Division is bred,
As a result of capital gain.
At the end of the day,
Parity would say,
We all get wet in the rain.
~Alan Elder (Hong Kong, Scotland)
Golden Temple
Riding high on the limpid waves
Rising high on the shimmering presence
Blue waters of white marbled chequers
For the eternal hymns of wayward heart
The golden domes invoking a saffron path.
Novices of thoughts and sunshine abiding
The golden swarms of vibratory atoms
The hush of pilgrims on the circular pitch
Tearing apart structures of egoed ditch.
Give vent to destinations of beauty & liberty
The concerns of soul now past its restrictions
Illuminate a glance bereft of the inner tumult
Saluting the Guru’s presence in a silent rebirth.
~Durlabh Singh (England)
