October in the City: A Book of Amnesia

Lok Fung


When dizzied bodies drip into spinning stones
the city's drains ring with the boom of firecrackers
and I'm a fluttering mayfly in the sunken riverbed
disturbing the whiteness of the dead light and the putrefying grass
tearing at someone's face        then tearing my own face
riven gaze filled with mud
and a word of farewell can't be rubbed in
viruses dance through the pulse of the tributaries
from foxtrot diarrhea to tango flu
becoming thunderous coughing
turbid breath and rivers haven't reopened the harbor of fate
with fevered enlightenment
you still carry pointed rocks over the smooth embankments
step by step cutting the sash of rumors
promises carry glass splinters
to pile up on the newly-happy arched bridge
on the bridge youth decorates a moonless window
below the bridge death belts out a lyric-less song
you and I have never approached from so far before
in the hesitation of the water's vomits or stammers
time twitches
and turns into the white page you made a wish on
I've ruthlessly smeared it with the ink of water weeds
smeared it into the color of our old age
and so        in the end        you can't escape

When the sick city lies down and becomes an occupied stone
the canals of the body stir the consciousness awake
the unlit sky draws clumps of clouds
pushing the people below toward raised banners and posters
some people find lit corners where colored light pours out
neon shadow puppets hold the encircled coils
heartfelt fringes flow from the heartland's upper reaches to the midlands
and converge with the turbulent public courage of the lower reaches
the streets of umbrellas are like multicolored mushroom fortresses
guarding the city's moats        the moats' layers of eroded soil
dark thunder or mobs whip up flames in all directions
the occupiers ebb away and then surge back in
you try to cross the defensive blockades toward me
but with your trembling hands and feet you shrink into a street lamp
feebly pinned to the river bend of secure emotion
when the tides of the times toss you backward
and you become an indistinct point in the distance
with the smoky noisy dawn disappearing bit by bit
and the city walls collapse       you crawl to the dangerous shores of
                                                                                    an interior river
with your bald head       and many-jointed hands
and the reborn me        can't recognize you anymore

When the time comes that the river of freedom doesn't silt up
the flow of deposits can choose its own exit
and the ruins of the city will bloom with plants and chrysanthemums
when daylight comes        you and I will never meet again


October 8, 2014

translated from the Chinese by Eleanor Goodman

Read the original in Chinese, Traditional

Read the Chinese, Simplified translation

Listen to the poem read in the original Chinese by Hedy Bok:

I don't live in Hong Kong; I've been there at most five or six times. But like many across the world, I followed last year's Umbrella Revolution closely. Watching news accounts of protestors, many of them students, peacefully gathering and asking for liberties that we in the West take for granted (at our peril), likeminded people, myself among them, couldn't help but sympathize. The participants were organized, tidy, civil, and tolerant, allowing discussion, disagreement, and the creation of art and literature within their own ranks. That flourishing conversation, and the youthfulness of so many of the protestors, made the ensuing violence an affront to everyone—or at least to all those who value open discussion and civil society.

"The political is the personal," as the saying goes, and Lok Fung's "October in the City" bears that out. Lok Fung was born and raised in Hong Kong. She is connected intimately to the city, to its politics and its future, and, as a university professor, to its young people. Her poem approaches the protests through the lens of a friendship crumbling in the interpersonal gulf that has split open under the pressure of political disagreement. In the context of the poem, as for many in real life, the protests are a defining moment, an event that forces people to choose sides. Hong Kong has experienced such moments before, such as the handover in 1997, and at this point it's hard to say if anything concrete will come from the turmoil. But as Lok Fung puts it, "the reborn me can't recognize you anymore." Personal ties as well as political ones have been permanently severed, and the city can only settle for a new, likely temporary, normal.

Lok Fung (Natalia S. H. Chan) is a poet, cultural critic, and Ph.D. in comparative literature and cultural studies from the University of California, San Diego. She is currently an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a guest anchor on Radio Television Hong Kong's program of performing arts. Her publications in Chinese include the poetry collections Distance and Dislocation, and the short-story collection The Carbon-Burning City, as well as Decadent City: Hong Kong Popular Culture, City on the Edge of Time: Gender, Special Effects and the 1997 Politics of Hong Kong Cinema, and Please Stand Behind the Yellow Line: Traces of Time in Hong Kong Literature. Her volume of poetry, Flying Coffin, received the Nineth Biennial Awards for Chinese Literature (Poetry) in 2007. Her critical work, Butterfly of Forbidden Colors: The Artistic Image of Leslie Cheung, received the Hong Kong Book Prize as well as "The Best Book of the Year" in 2008.

Eleanor Goodman is an award-winning translator and author. Her first poetry collection is Nine Dragon Island (Zephyr Press, 2016), and her translations include Something Crosses My Mind: Selected Poems of Wang Xiaoni (Zephyr Press, 2014), Iron Moon: An Anthology of Chinese Workers Poetry (White Wine Press, 2017), and The Roots of Wisdom: Poems by Zang Di (Zephyr Press, 2017). Her newest translation, In the Roar of the Machine: Selected Poems by Zheng Xiaoqiong, is forthcoming in The New York Review of Books poetry series. She is a research associate at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University.