A visual representation of "Hero Tree" by Kit Fan
LAW Yuet Ying
Sha Tin Government Secondary School
The poem is set on a school campus in early summer.
It describes the leafless hero tree with budding red flowers.
The writer of the poem has probably fallen asleep in class and started dreaming
because of the hot weather. As the scene is set in school,
I drew a hand which is holding a pen with an image of a hero tree.
The marks created by the pen symbolise the student’s dream state and mind,
which are full of beautiful patterns.
A girl is swinging under the half fiery and half barren hero tree,
suggesting freedom and a relief of stress from studies.
Hero Tree
From the classroom window,
the summer’s aorta revives in the dark
hero tree. Bark ideogram,
ember-tinted, no trace of leaves.
A family of four cicadas homes in
on its tall ebony nakedness:
something for a long summer song.
The white chalk stub U-turns
on the wide blackboard, hissing out
a map of Confucian morphemes:
stone-classics that were chiselled
for the eye looking straight into the heart.
Fans spin overhead, ripe dozy hours.
Our heads bow, fishing for cancelled
valleys lost to the Yangtze River Dam.
Kit Fan
“Hero Tree” was published in Paper Scissors Stone by Kit Fan, p.20. Copyrights © 2011 by Hong Kong University Press.