A Veteran Talking
We tossed them high into the air
And caught them coming down,
Sliding straight through
The tips of our bayonets.
Babies cry in any case,
But the women, oh, the women,
They made such a racket;
Had to quieten them down:
That was more bayonet practice.
We had our instructions, we had to clear the place.
We got rid of the men first, one way or another.
As for the women, we did our manly thing with them first
Anywhere, behind doorways, in the middle of the streets
Anytime, morning, afternoon, night,
Then we got rid of them, just as efficiently.
It took only a few days
For us to get into a routine.
We did what had to be done:
Shooting, knifing, hanging, burning,
Whatever was necessary to keep order
In a disorderly city.
After about eight weeks
We succeeded in quelling the ruckus.
It was much hard work:
Unending vigilance and continual practice.
Finally the city surrendered.
It was slightly more manageable, for by then
We had cut the population by half or more.
Even so, there was no letting up
For us the Occupying Force.
Unswervingly, we had to keep our cogs oiled,
Our tanks running, our dignity unsoiled.
Incense Tree
Aquilaria sinensis
Incense root incense fruit
Incense loading at the port:
Groves of incense trees
Lined the harbour once
At Aberdeen.
Joss sticks, agarwood, potions, scents,
Thriving commerce
Export trade
That once was,
Gave ‘Hong Kong’ its name:
Incense Port, and its fame.
Truly fragrant truly harbour,
But not the
Exoticised ‘fragrant harbour’:
Incense Port its true name.
Heung not Hong
Gong not Kong;
In any case
Transliteration into English sounds
Of monosyllabic tonal Chinese
Is alchemy in reverse
Changing all that is gold
Into dross, loss and mockery.
Poachers come on hacking sprees
From China with saws, axes and carts,
Depleting our incense trees
That did thrive in these parts.
Aquilaria sinensis
The Chinese Incense Tree
Is to-day endangered species.
Homage to Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking (1997), with much sadness at her early death.
Cock-a-doodle-doo
Dusk
’Tis the witching hour
Though not mid-night
The hour of entre chien et loup
When light plays with shade
The entr’acte between birth and death
Which we call life
Reduced to an instant
One spot
Which one can just skip across
And be done with
Is it a kind of
Circadian hitch
That catches
Like an electric shock
A sudden inexplicable blackness
A second’s deep despair
In a while
The moon rises
Dark branches
Lace the skies
Night has arrived
And all is well
A Poem is Like
A poem is like
Lightning followed by thunder
Magma bursting forth
Silent rumble of plate tectonics
Geo-politics in a nut-shell
Molecules dancing
Chromosomes behaving
Microbes on a corpse
The Mobius strip
The mathematician’s nought
Théophile Gautier’s marble
‘The other side of silence’
The crossing of parallel lines
‘Etcetera’
A poem is always
Controlled language formation
Complex as matter
Simple as a flower
Conditioned
As autonomous
Among infinite variables
It is designed discourse
