Phosphene

When someone dies.

the branches of a single tree
bow heavy with dew
in forest shadow a twig snaps
beneath the black paw of a stalking cat
and a startled bird flies free

when someone dies

the seaweed wrings its fingers
fields of wheat wave
goodbye
a crow sharpens its beak
on porous stone

when someone dies

the wind mourns their name once
in old forgotten tongue
the stars flicker off for a sliver of time
the stones yawn
the ground grows fat

Michael Fredman,Skull print by Michael Fredman 2001.

Tiananmen Square: 25 years on

I was in China in 1994. I was acting over there, in the Shanghai International Shakespeare festival. I was young and wide-eyed. I still have quite big eyes.

Anyway, with my companions, I went to Tiananmen square, and had a small experience, about which I wrote a poem, that evening.

It isn’t very good, it approaches doggerel in fact, but I remembered that I had written it today, on this anniversary of the massacre that the Chinese government still refuses officially to acknowledge.

I reproduce the poem faithfully – doggedly – below:

There are pockmarks in the paving of
Tiananmen square
There are the young and the old
as the sun sets
behind the Forbidden City

We are tourists, with our votes
and our dollars
the bicycles fly past us, and

the soldiers march
across The Square

We met two young men,
by the flowers

built to depict a rising Phoenix.

Students, like ourselves,
at “the Peoples’ University”

We sat on the ground, cross legged
Louisa joked, it was “a sit down protest”

We all thought of tanks.

We sat and we talked
of our different worlds met there
and the crowds milled past

‘as westerners you will have heard of the massacre here no doubt, in 1989’

We looked into his eyes.

Two men in suits refused to mill
they stood nearby
listening and watching

He broke off and looked at the men.
Stopped speaking,

turned back.

‘It was not as bad as it was reported as being’ he said.

I looked down at the fresh paving stones,
at the pockmarks
on the old.

The men in suits and sunglasses conversed with a soldier

We offered to buy our new found friends lunch, and we walked the Beijing streets.

I saw a three year old girl
fall off her father’s bicycle
to the street below,

watched her get up without a tear, back onto the bike.

At McDonald’s they took their first bites
of Mcfreedom.

Both their first bites were their last.

‘This isn’t food’, they stated, matter of factly.

We said goodbye, outside.
With a plastic effigy of Ronald McDonald grinning from a bench.

They went off to unlock their bikes.

The two men in suits and sunglasses
were waiting.

 

Aswim

Aswim

One such summer I

sun of nothing

took your hand in mine

we

upon the smoothed pebbles

journeyed

down to the sea

Naked

and we slipped

steady

In

Shedding our clothes

our accumulated selves

I loved you

I loved you

That I

was free

Like blood from a vein

Flowing, pulsing with life

and inevitably

Lost.