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.