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Commendable Award


Senior Secondary



A visual representation of "City" by Louise Ho

LO Hin Yui
Man Kwan QualiEd College


In this city, economic inequality is built as capitalism creates wealth gap between the rich and the poor. A lot of people can’t even support their own living. There are street sleepers and hopeless people in the city. They can’t do anything. What they can do is to survive in this society and be trapped in this city with no hope and no breath.

This seemingly prosperous city is just like a joke. Because of people’s greed, there are a lot of victims. While we enjoy some really delicious food, some street sleepers are so painfully searching for something to fill their stomach. In the poem, a street sleeper in the city, which is presented as a faceless dark figure in my picture, just raises his hands to pray for a warm home in a winter evening.

What can we do to help? We can still stay positive and be grateful for what we have in life, while donating money to help others if we are able to. This is a way to support them and add beauty to the city.

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.