A visual representation of "City" by Louise Ho
LAI Cheok Lun Derrick
St. Joseph’s College
This picture shows a man sitting alone in an alley outside a public washroom, rubbing his hands for warmth on a cold winter night.
It is getting dark, with a few pedestrians walking by, but none of them takes notice of this homeless street sleeper.
Vehicles also pass by as relentlessly as wind which blows through the streets and makes the coldness even more unbearable.
Eyes are the ‘windows of the soul’.
I did not draw the street sleeper’s eyes as we fail to see his wants and understand his needs.
In the picture, the man is the only one suffering while many others are enjoying the busy city nightlife.
There are many more street sleepers who are ignored by people in Hong Kong.
The freezing wind and aching loneliness are taking their souls away.
The city is eliminating street sleepers unsympathetically while it continues to put up neon lights to drown out the darkness of the night.
Could we possibly light up their lives by giving them a helping hand?
City
No fingers claw at the bronze gauze
Of a Hong Kong December dusk,
Only a maze of criss-crossing feet
That enmeshes the city
In a merciless grid.
Between many lanes
Of traffic, the street-sleeper
Carves out his island home.
Or under the thundering fly-over,
Another makes his own peace of mind.
Under the staircase,
By the public lavatory,
A man entirely unto himself
Lifts his hand
And opens his palm.
His digits
Do not rend the air,
They merely touch
As pain does, effortlessly.
Louise Ho
“City” was published in Incense Tree: Collected Poems of Louise Ho by Louise Ho, p.45. Copyrights © 2009 by Hong Kong University Press.