Aiden Heung is a native Chinese poet currently working and living in Shanghai. He writes about the city of Shanghai and people who live in it. Heis a graduate of Tongji University.
A Notebook From 1967, China
Leather-bound messages,
traveled from hands to hands
and arrived here,
in an antique store;
a display of a turbulent past,
unclear now
on yellow pages, where
a downpour of thoughts had fallen
and a roar of raging words—
silenced,
after almost fifty years,
by a red price tag.
~
November 2018
The sad blue sky’s clear dust gropes its way down
toward the city,
The asphalt roads glimmer like ice.
Red lights dim, like eyes deprived of sleep,
trying to understand the great mystery of the morning.
An old man stands at an empty phone booth,
looking at his map
on which a thousand places are marked,
with no names.
His walking stick dangles on his arm,
a compass uncertain of the south, where
the sun throws a shadow.
Soot-colored silence,
a black cat,
jumps into an open window, the curtain tied back and knotted.
An army of houses stand vigil on the first day
of a lunar winter
~
National Business
The architect draws from his file
a map, on which
a tiny spot is red-circled.
Here, he says,
six billion investment;
His eyes glisten like coins
and his black tie dangles like a sword
above the blueprint of a tower,
cadaverous, awe-provoking,
the color of champagne gold.
I know the block of the street, where
rosy clouds flew over
houses with mortared walls,
though moss-eaten,
home to eaves-seeking swifts,
rattled now,
by excavator tires.