The Kowloon-Canton Railway By Yu Kwang-chung

“How does it feel to be in Hong Kong?” you ask.

Holding your aerogram, I smile sadly.

Hong Kong beats with a metallic rhythm, my friend,

Of a thousand steel wheels playing on the steel tracks

To and from the border, from sunrise to sundown

Going north, coming south, playing the Border Blues again and again,

Like an umbilical cord that can not be severed, nor crushed asunder,

Reaching to the vast endless Northland,

The parent body so familiar yet so strange,

Mother Earth joined yet long disconnected.

An old cradle rocking far far away

Rocking back your memory and mine, my friend.

And like all raw nerve ends

This railway is specially sensitive,

For right now, on the platform of a small station

Holding your aerogram, leaning against the lamppost,

Closing my eyes, just by listening, I can tell

The light knocking of the inbound passenger train,

The heavy hammering, heaven-and-earth shaking, outbound freight train,

And the stinking, engulfing, suffocating

Hurry, hold your breath, pig train.

Yu Kwang-chung is a poet and essayist born in mainland China in 1928 who has lived in Hong Kong for many years. From “New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices,” edited by Geremie Barme and Linda Jaivin (Times Books: 520 pp., $30). Used by kind permission.