Night is not quite finished
A few hours before, we rode rickshaws
Through the descending rubble of the Beijing backstreets
Yards from the teahouses of upper class China, a million miles from their affluence
A jaunt back to the opulent international hotel
From the theatre of acrobats, kung fu, mime and changing masks
Powerful young men pushed or pedalled along
An illegal route skirting Tiananmen Square
More than a match for the Marrakech Souk or the Delhi of old
Surprising and frightening rats and lovers alike
Both exposing their raw needs of the night
As overground and underground merged with olfactory collusion.
The Olympics are coming, two years away but only one side of the city is on show
The other three sides of the square of life
Yet to expire and rebuild in their image of the new future
One Dream, one World, one Side
An interlude, an injection of wine, a few hours sleep
Dawn is ready to arrive, if it only could
The modern Beijing will not accede
Full moon demure, behind the Chinese walls of fog and low flying cloud
What do they want us to see, what remains hidden
Do they dare to include deity in their command?
We walk by ourselves in an eerie start
Wondering why we are alone on this day
Through the silence of the mist
Several thousand now surround us, on the edge
Prevented by the uniforms from entering The Square
The students of yesterday
Now carrying their children not their hopes on their shoulders
The Imperial Guard emerges, in silence apart from their goose step sounds
Flag-waving children mute, red and blue sirens of the police flash but do not chime
The military band, under the Chairman’s gaze, musically raises the red flag
Dawn magically arises above the haze
As those on the ground still wait
For enlightenment, as the steps re-cross the road from whence they came
The people go about their business, dropping the new red warrants in the gutter
To hustle unheard-of yuan
In the new Beijing Day
Beijing, China, October 2008
