Dusk at Quarry Bay

This moment I am walking into a crowd

Too many are walking in the same direction

Emerging from underground

Marks from years ago seem to have been brushed off

In front of me rises one more overpass

Streetlamps transmit cold air

In a shop advertising congee raw or boiled

Someone carrying claypot rice disappears

Someone looks at the glass

The frozen street scene or himself

This moment is only a mood

Dragging daylight’s limping doubts into dark alleys

Someone patiently folds a cardboard box

Someone blankly stares at the spaces columns cut open

I stop in front of the traffic lights looking at the lights

Learning that the facts are there

Learning that the night sky between dense buildings

Dare not speak lightly or be lenient

Diners in the Seventh Heaven Restaurant are sparse

Someone’s still cutting flowers in the stall

A deluge of fallen branches, leaves and old speeches

Fine sounds repeat from beneath your feet

Old men use synthetic calligraphy brushes

Tremblingly tracing over words from ancient antiquity

One thousand flowers one thousand colours

Sealed in hanging texts

This moment I look at the road

And see someone looking back at me on the other side

This moment I gaze at the glass windows on office buildings

Ju Ming practises t’ai chi in a spacious lobby

Those empty windows on trams

Let the street scenes pass through

Packed shop signs

With occasional typos

Stoves emit benevolent steam

I can’t rub off the rust on mirrors

Sometimes ding ding is an alarm

Reckless people turn around and swear

Sometimes it’s just loneliness

Like raindrops touching hands on a cold night

Warmth stays for a time

Then leaves

This moment I walk out of a funeral parlour

Squeezed as if in a revolving stair

One thousand people one thousand thoughts

The flower cutter shredding silhouettes

Clinging to the river of faces

Moving forward or back

I enter the underground crowd

Learning to be like a train

Without scenery on either side

To learn about people through a metallic voice

Not only my own echo

Written after his memorial service on 14 January 2013