A visual representation of "City" by Louise Ho
LAM Dorothy
Good Hope School
Through this artwork, I hope that the audience can empathise with street sleepers and feel about their lives, thus reflect on how they can help to relieve their miserable situation.
‘City’ is a poem that expresses the isolation and helplessness of street sleepers.
Through this monochrome drawing with black and white colours, an indifferent atmosphere is created.
The one-point perspective and high-rise buildings create a feeling of oppression.
The shoeprints blocking the view reflect how the street sleepers are being trampled upon in the city.
All these resonate well with the poem’s depressing mood.
I believe that we can all help to remove the black shoeprints and fill the city with colours and smiley faces instead.
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.