The Street of Poetry and Letters

On the street of poetry and letters
Young men pursue the spell of poetry
Writing lines that will end in poverty

On the street of poetry and letters
Thoughts like towers rise upward to the stars
Each door and stairwell blocked with iron bars

On the street of poetry and letters
Old men like dragons grow claws from their feet
Lie on beds of fame dreamed of in their sleep

On the street of poetry and letters
Life passes in search of the perfect word
In a sentence that will never be heard

— Guangzhou, November 2024

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On a British map dated 1840 showing the City of Canton (today’s Guangzhou), which between 1757 and 1842 was the sole port for foreign trade with China, and in which foreign merchants had to remain within a restricted area (‘The 13 Hongs’) on the Pearl River, one of the thoroughfares in the Old City was named ‘The Street of Poetry and Letters’. In November 2024 we visited Ghangzhou to search for the traces of Canton and of this street in particular, and, to our surprise, it still exists under the name ‘Shishu Lu’.
XXXWhatever poetry it once had, however, had gone. Surrounded on every side by crowds and commerce, the street is now home to the homeless, almost incongruous among China’s industriousness. Only someone who has never been near to the street would describe life on it as poetic, but the street people we met on this one were friendly. In my poem, I imagine some of them to have started as poets, or with a poetic disposition, which is the straightest path to poverty in any economic system, and China is no exception.