A visual representation of "Survival" by Gillian Bickley
WONG Yidon
St. Mary’s Canossian College
The poem ‘Survival’ describes the speaker’s admiration for the strong and dependable tree that is always there for her no matter how the environment changes.
In my artwork, the cool colours of the broken concrete buildings in the background exemplify the harsh, unfriendly and heavily polluted urban environment.
On the contrary, the tree is the speaker’s beacon of hope and a promise that the future will improve, which is why the tree in the artwork is illustrated with warm colours.
The bright green leaves and the thick trunk suggest that the tree is indomitable and long-lived despite the menacing environment.
While the speaker embraces the tree to express her gratitude, the personified tree gently holds the speaker’s face, demonstrating the closeness and mutual care between the speaker and the tree, and urging humans to take good care of the environment.
Survival
Thank you trees for being there, for staying
when many of the friends you knew─
birds and butterflies ─ have gone;
for flourishing, even; growing old
where concrete buildings
are constantly knocked down.
How brave you are to survive
in a place where the air is foul
and the noise unnatural;
you who should normally expect
to stabilise your roots
in humid humming forests,
alive with the smells of
animal and vegetable life
(not the smells of mineral death, as here).
It is good to look down a street
and, amazed, to see you there,
solid and green and cool, uncompromised
by the advertising posters on your boles;
a promise
that, since there was a past,
there may quite possibly be a future too.
1982
Gillian Bickley
“Survival” was first published in For the Record and other Poems of Hong Kong by Gillian Bickley, p.25. Copyrights© 2003 by Proverse Hong Kong. Reprinted by permission of Proverse Hong Kong. Please approach Proverse Hong Kong by email (proverse@netvigator.com) for permission to use this poem or others in the collection.