On Viewing Huang Bore’s Paintings of Hong Kong

 

How to put Hong Kong into ink?

A city with many names

Crooked roads over green mountains

that lead to mists behind

Layered houses in the distance

dappled in light, lean on the hillside

sailors in the boat under Taiping

mountain release the sail

At the bay mouth we see the bank

and train station in red brick

 

Which is Hong Kong’s true landscape?

The people within it

consider themselves guests

or abandoned subjects

Their many minds are crammed but quiet

yet there will always be someone who draws what he sees

Under Kowloon’s fiery tongue

wooden houses burn

we see no scared mass of people

only creosote smoke blocking our vision

The people standing in the ruins

Harden expressions that were once panicked

and bend down to pick fragments of lost sympathy

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