.
Sarah Liang is a veteran reporter with the Hong Kong Epoch Times who was recently assaulted by communist agents.
It seems there’s little hope to bless
__as Hong Kong’s hard time hardens.
Its skin-thin blossoms’ fallen mess
__is brushed from Hong Kong gardens.
On Springtime trunks, Wind’s mallets bang
__then floral debris settles.
The Epoch Times’ staff’s Sarah Liang
__drops scattered blood like petals.
A journalist for 20 years
__on TV screen and paper,
Before her, ill intention clears
__and facts make slander taper.
She challenges the mighty state
__and withers down the bully.
Its boss-eyed men retaliate
__but don’t recover fully.
They smashed the paper’s print machines,
__they smashed its databases,
They splashed its sheets with lies’ latrines
__but left egg on their faces.
And though they wack her flesh and bone,
__intimidate and thugger,
Pretend they’re not the Party’s own,
__the truth is known as other.
It seems there’s little hope to bless
__as Hong Kong’s hard time hardens.
But there’s more strength than Bad Men guess
__in Epoch Times’ fresh gardens.
.
.
Damian Robin is a writer and editor living in the United Kingdom.
Nicely done.
Thanks Gail
Before we get a wise cracker (or not so wise, just noisy) commenting on the words in the link
on-the-beating-up-of-sarah-liang-by-damian-robin
I can reassure everyone that I did not beat up Sarah Liang.
Thank you. :^)
I’m glad you cleared that up. 😉
Thank you for clearing up so many messes on the SCP site, Mike.
O mender of the mis-spilt pen,
you fine and whole deleter,
We need your clipped skills now and then
to make our script stores neater.
Go, bro.
Thanks, Damian!
A masterful, fighting poem, Damian, beautifully composed so quickly after the event it deals with. Your first stanza made me think of the simple “May-mess, like on orchard boughs” from a sonnet entitled, “The Starlight Night,” by Victorian writer Gerard Manley Hopkins. The garden imagery re-applied to the free press in the final stanza, after the intervening description of events, is stronger and still more effective.
Thanks for the helpful comments, Margaret.
Good therapy for performance anxiety — as I make a performance of too many things :^)
I read a lot of Hopkins as a teen and into twenties — a good side of my schooling as it was there I was introduced — on the Eng Lit Exam syllabus, I think. And I went on to read further, though not “The Starry Night”. He seems less successful with this than the nature-centered / earthy observational poems that get to the thing-ness of things. Maybe, having less concrete knowledge of the atmos-stratos-cosmos-sphere than of direct experience with God-outdoors, he was unable to grasp the grandeur and made do with airy, eery concepts. Thanks for the re-introduction, O Educator of homees [another smiley face space here ].
Hope you got the en-crypt-ion on my last comment on your sublime, sibylline, sybilian, civilian poem being predictably good — as it was, doubtlessly, foretold in unread prophecy in the book of time (if you get my drift).
[ space place for thumbs up here ]
Damian, this heart-rending poem shouts out for those who go unheard and I applaud you, not only for your accomplished poetry, but for your bold heart and sense of justice. Thank you!!
Cheers, Susan. You are a boon to this site with your encouragement and good words in prose and poems …
There is much awkwardness in HK — more so now as Falun Gong practitioners and supporters are getting the CCP ‘bad movement / anti-China divisives’ treatment. FG has been a solid beacon for righteous action in HK, showing a measured, pragmatic, spiritual and a-political approach to living in HK. Yet, the main CCP-sponsered paper there has recently called for the banning of Falun Gong in Hong Kong.
You will no doubt know this, having won a prominent place in the 2021 FOFG Poetry Contest https://classicalpoets.org/2021/05/13/winners-of-the-friends-of-falun-gong-poetry-contest-announced/ and https://fofg.org/competitions/2021-poetry/
Keep on strengthening the Truth, Susan.
A beautiful piece of writing. I wish the world could see and hear the beauty of poems like yours Damian!
Thanks, Elizabeth. I am glad you support the content of this website with your magnanimous words.
Comments like these help us all — Keep ’em coming when they are appropriate!