I love you only because it’s you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

I like this poem very much especially the first line because of the paradox of love and hate in relationships. It is just complicated. The poem conveys that when you love someone deeply yet are not returned the same favour, you will hate that person as well. However, the poem goes on to say that love prevails/overrides hate finally because of the passion of love itself.

I like this poem very much because it plays with the sounds of words like “black blackberries”, “to eat blackberries for breakfast”, “the black art of blackberry-making”, “many-lettered, one syllabled lumps”, “squeeze, squinch, splurge”, “black language of blackberry” etc. When I read the poem aloud, I feel the oral and auditory experience of language. The poem compares words to blackberries. So eating the blackberries is like orally tasting language itself. But sometimes language could be quite “prickly” because it is like black magic which is not made for good. And there are peculiar words which you have to taste thoroughly in order to understand its unusual quality.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

This poem conveys that we are famous to others because of what we could/should do. Even though the matter may seem insignificant or routine, it still does matter to a certain extent.

If you tuck the name of a loved one
under your tongue too long
without speaking it
it becomes blood
sigh
the little sucked-in breath of air
hiding everywhere
beneath your words.

No one sees
the fuel that feeds you.

Submitted by R. Joyce Heon

This poems talks about the destruction power of time. A fern under pressure in a span of time would disappear. Your memory of a loved one could be lost if he/she is not remembered/spoken. Something that is hidden away could be lost forever. In Hong Kong context, if Hong Kong history and Hong Kong story is not written, narrated, retold or passed onto our next generation, our collective memory could be lost one day. And, our Hong Kong identity would be lost as well. That is exactly when mainlandization becomes successful in Hong Kong. Therefore, Hong Kong people should keep telling Hong Kong story to keep our Hong Kong identity alive so that our city will not be dying out.