South, a thirty-hour wound in a steel intestine
digesting human hope in a waking dream.
Stepping into battle armed with a naive heart;
a bitter baptism reveals the city’s scheme.
In a school of unlearning, identities erased,
drifting through days, haunting his own life like a spectre,
a walking zombie in an abyss of solitude.
Salvation binds him to a lifetime debt collector.
Novelty, a fragile perfume of exploitation,
earning a sixpence without seeking the moon.
Youthful energy spent with diminishing returns,
each hour a grain of sand in an unending dune.
Wild lychees will blossom from this barren soil,
a slow transformation as the silkworm will awaken.
Maps appearing within peripheral vision,
unearthed emotions light the roads to be taken.
Scrapheap bound, a common grave for these iron nails;
authentic wildflowers seek the soils of progress.
The family of dreamers was a forest grown overnight,
only to be cleared away by the dawn of their success.
Another poem based on Adrift in the South by Xiao Hai in Granta magazine, detailing the life of migrant labour in China. I managed to suitably condense this one into just five stanzas!
1994ever 