Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Poetry 2017 | Page 158
Ode to Old Shanghai
Harrow International School Hong Kong,
Stranger, Ella - 14
O’ Shanghai, her comely streets of old glamour,
Where young girls meddle with limbs so lissom,
In the vibrant streets of parade and loud song,
Opera masks and gold- everything glistens.
In the tea rooms brimming with heavy steam are
old mah-jong players, their content faces jaded
And throughout the dark and ancient forts,
The Majestic wealth lives on; not yet faded.
In the shops along the bund, romance fills the air,
A girl feels sensual buying fur and lace,
There is soft and plush velvet along her cheeks,
and thick makeup on her porcelain face.
Young boys go gambling, and laugh when
they’ve lost
And around the racecourse, the youth go and
clamour,
There’s so much money, so close to home
Around the people of old shanghai glamour.
And when the band plays, they all jump and
swing,
A young flapper in a qi pao dances and squeals,
So opulent and full of youthful energy,
Mortality has never seemed so unreal.
In the nooks and holes underneath their feet,
Live the miserable workers who suffer below,
And for those in agony far behind,
Mortality itself may have some appeal.
Who shroud their own corpse in the little they
earn,
And slowly wither away when comes the snow.
They become a husk of a human being
Pestilence and poverty gather like dirt,
The desolate elderly are forced to toil,
With weathered eyes, betrayed and hurt,
Death follows them all, but the people know
the nameless living are the nameless dead,
Each one the same, thoughts shifting into a blur,
All brimming with inescapable dread.
There are empty bowls and many sleepless nights,
Houses of forgotten rubble; streets of sand,
The money has dried up, a drought has followed,
All a child can do is hold her mother’s hand.
She whispers; “why us?”, but no one knows why
So she hopes from the very depths of her soul,
That there may be a way to have a life,
But there’s so much hunger, so close to home.
The futility shakes them to their core,
From acts dignified people try to conceal
Like a final breath quivering in icy air,
Mortality has never seemed so real.
O’ Shanghai, her streets melting into chaos,
Moving and flowing and falling-alas,
Poison black, and red, and the most neon yellow
Grey concrete floods the mellow hills and grass.
Progression and regression- it feels the same,
There’s isolation and barriers of gold,
Those in bondage are yet to touch their master,
There’s so much difference, so close to home.
Perhaps they should replace God with money,
As it’s the mighty fuel of Shanghai zeal