Waiting at a Bustop Under an Umbrella
By Damian Robin

The pro-democracy tear-soaked bud
could burst into a petaled flower flood.

Protesters gorged the city like a sea
and said they’re not against the CCP,

that foreign power just a march away.
But that had been a public holiday.

Will central shops and businesses agree?
Now holidays are over there’s the fee

for rent and wages, power, overheads;
and with no customers this payment spreads,

for how can customers come in and spend
if the city centre’s one dead end?

And, yes, they’re paying for police to wait.
And just how long will foreign powers wait?

 

Damian Robin is poet living in England. He works for an international newspaper and a bilingual magazine. He lives with his wife and three children. He is winner of Second Place in The Society of Classical Poets’ 2014 Poetry Competition.

 

The Umbrella Revolution
By Lu “Reed ABCs” Wei

“If it continues, the consequences will be unimaginable…”
—The Communist Party-run People’s Daily

A written placard states, in Mong Kok district in Hong Kong,
“We can’t accept Hong Kong police becoming the Gong An,”
the mainland Chinese Public Bureau for Security,
that operates unfettered—absolute authority.
One also sees on Sogo Corner down in Causeway Bay,
amidst the neon lights where neat protesters’ posters say:
“Do not repeat June 4th,” a ref’rence to the crushed revolt,
Tiananmen, a quarter of a century ago.
What chance does the Umbrella Revolution have against
the heavy-handed hailing of a Party that’s incensed?

 

Th’ Umbrella Revolution: Autumn 2014
By Lu “Reed ABCs” Wei

Ten thousand or more demonstrators occupy
the centre of Hong Kong. With plastic raincoats, masks,
protective goggles, and umbrellas, they defy
the growing rays of communist demands and tasks.
Against the vetting, they protest with love and peace.
Like freedom in the middle of a storm, they bask.
But haters of democracy don’t ever cease.
They wait as well, for their own moment in the sun.
They wait to take their city back, to clear their streets.
They wait to burn away the filth with gas and gun.
They wait to shine on this charade, to flout the sky
with clouds of pepper spray that sting the eyes and tongue.

 

Deafening Silence
By Evan Mantyk

Deafening silence from the West
Echoes on the streets of Hong Kong
Where people’s voices manifest,
Protesting against all that’s wrong.
The demented communist beast,
The world’s enemy not just theirs,
Cannib’lizes them at a feast
Eaten on rising market shares.

To the East, raise your heart and voice!
For storied good, lend them your hand!
It is the time to make a choice,
It is the time to take a stand!
Add your hand to the umbrella,
Support human rights in China!

 

Evan Mantyk is an English teacher living in New York.

 

Featured Image: A large number of pro-democracy Hongkongers lights their phones in the night air of Hong Kong, on Oct. 4, 2014. (Song Xianglong/Epoch Times)

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The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary.


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4 Responses

  2. Reid McGrath

    As people in a deep dark cavern will
    flicker their lights when they are lost or trapped,
    having fell in, their energy all sapped,
    protesters in Hong Kong, with time to kill,
    flicker their lights for all the world to see.
    Their faces say it all. It is so sad.
    They say help us. Don’t ignore us. It’s bad.
    They seem to look out at us for some key
    we wish we had to save them from their plight;
    and yet their courage and their bravery
    and all of the light, white, and their white light,
    is seen by some; namely is seen by three
    poets: Robin, Mantyk, and Bruce Dale Wise
    who won’t give up until the Commy dies.

    Reply
  3. Li "Web Crease" Du

    On Gloucester Road: October 1, 2014

    Beneath the concrete structures and skyscrapers of Hong Kong,
    like magic, people in a crowd lift up their mobile phones,
    turn on their lights, and hold them to the gods of freedom and
    democracy, a strong-honed message held on high in hand.
    Its beauty is spectacular, a river flowing down
    the sidewalks and the streets, the bridges and the landscaped ground,
    its wavelets scintillating in the city’s night-time air,
    a healthy inspiration, a Pitié-Salpêtrière,
    exploding forth with justice, like gunpowder in a war,
    or nova in the cosmos starting from a white dwarf star.

    Reply

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