| translated from the Hebrew by Chana Bloch |
I am in Hong Kong.
There's a river here swarming with snakes.
There are Greeks, Chinese, Negroes.
Carnival dragons
gape at the paper lanterns.
Who said they eat you alive here?
A great crowd went down to the river.
You've never seen such silk in your life,
redder than poppy blossoms.
In Hong Kong
the sun rises in the East
and they water the flowers with a perfumed spray
to improve their scent.
But in the evening the paper lanterns
are battered by the wind,
and if someone's murdered, they ask,
Was it a Chinaman? a Negro?
Did he die in pain?
Then they pitch his body into the river
and all the reptiles feed.
I am in Hong Kong.
In the evening the cafe lights dimmed
and paper lanterns were ripped in the streets.
The land kept erupting and seething
erupting and seething
and I alone knew
that there is nothing in the West
and nothing in the East.
The paper dragon yawned
but the earth erupted.
A horde of enemies will come here
who've never seen slik in their lives.
Only the little prostitutes
still receive their guests
in dresses of soiled silk
in tiny alcoves crowded with lanterns.
Some of them sob when morning comes
over their rotting flesh.
And if someone's killed, they ask,
Oh-oh, Chinese? Negro? Poor thing.
Let's hope he didn't die painfully.
And at dusk the first
of the visitors arrive
like a thorn in the living flesh.
I am in Hong Kong
and Hong Kong hangs on the ocean
like a colored lanterns on a hook
at the end of the world.
Perhaps the dragon
will swathe it in crimsom silk
and let it drop
into the abyss of stars.
And only the little prostitutes will sob into the silk
because even now
still now
men pinch them in the belly.
I am not in Hong Kong
and Hong Kong is not in the world.
Where Hong Kong used to be
there's a reddish stain
half in the water and half in the sky.
* * *
for another poem on war, go to:
"Break of Day in the Trenches" by Isaac Rosenberg (http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/education/tutorials/rose/poem.html).
(this is a link to Oxford University's Hypertext Page on this World War I Poem by Rosenberg.)