Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Poetry 2017 | Page 133

Is New Better?
The Independent Schools Foundation Academy, Davis, Ramsay - 13
What can be new?
Yet also be old?
A riddle that cannot be solved,
As when something changes,
It loses its original soul.
Where wind once rustled our hair,
Where the sun once glowed with warmth long gone.
Once was a fairytale’s castle,
Where its mellow stones,
Were the bones of a nation.
But this is no longer.
No breeze may reach the ground,
Rays from above attack viciously,
And we are down, defenceless.
Within this new skin ,
where is the soft core that we love?
A bright future they said,
A time where we control our destiny,
But nature is nature,
And we are nature,
So what gives us the right?
A crow flies among temples
Restless, never stopping,
As a metal cyclops occupies its perch.
The changes wrought,
Changed life for all.
No longer, no longer
Old Shanghai is no longer
No longer no longer,
What was before is no longer.
To change something old is to make something new.
They said it was a time to improve,
But in truth it’s a time of change.