Windy Beijing

Windy Beijing:

people on bikes

and startled sparrows everywhere

The thick air is filthy

The sun, trapped in haze,

is like a ruddy moon

Yesterday, only yesterday, we had clear autumn weather

Air-borne paper    metaphysical, soaring

Plastic bags glide overhead    swollen

so that the form of the wind is visible to me

Leaves rustle in trees

Covered from head to foot in dust, sparrows

fly twittering back to their nests

The ground is covered with Beijing accents

Thou, in whose unseen presence the buses and taxis

are driven

Riding my bike, I

am like an arrow

taut against the bow-string

Fired into the Beijing wind

I shoot through the door of my rented house

Two policemen come knocking:

I remember my boyhood,

reaching into a nest beneath a roof

Written on 24th of November, 1999

Translated by Simon Patten