Aiden Heung: 3 Poems

First Snow

The weight of winter, hard on every cloud

dropping low on this city, and soon

shredded,

ground

and falling white

from a vulnerable sky,

breeding

the first shade of darkness

prolonging the night.

A soft wavering voice

Against the wind —

Melancholy.

Two Monochrome Photos from Summer

1.

The morning heat

breaks through the window

and warps

the dream

into a hot reality.

8 o’clock,

the fateful hour of awakening,

reminded

by a ticking watch,

with almost the same rhythm

of the heart.

A moaning summer,

dying in the yards.

Some arranged flowers

yellow

from a sad florist.

2

The scorching south wind,

breath

of Feilian(1),

coming to all

in cities or villages.

A wash of tolling bells.

thick shadows

hidden

behind a mottled wall

and a murmuring crowd of people

squatting at the gate

of a silent neighborhood.

(1): god of wind in Chinese mythology

The Line He draws

for Tomas Transtroemer

The line he draws on his notebook

stretches out, endlessly,

with the sound of an axe cutting the air,

and continues its silent judgement, where

the world is halved.

I’m on one side;

My deeds the other, falling soundlessly;

A rebuke—

I cast my thought over

into the realm of inanity.

It bounces like a morning dew

on lifeless leaves.

Air is thinner there

than a breath.

I grab hold of the line —the edge of existence,

saved by an old hypothesis

of death.

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Aiden Heung is a native Chinese poet currently working and living in Shanghai. He writes about the city of Shanghai and about people who live in this city. He is a Tongji University graduate, with bilingual poems published in many online and offline magazines in Asia and Europe, such as New English Review, Alluvium, Eunoia Review and A Shanghai Poetry Zine among many others.