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My Pictures: Harbin. Heilongjiang, China.
Silent Moments No 3
Travel
Pain of yesterday, today and tomorrow.
My Pictures: Some thoughts from my students from a class on ‘Psychopathology’
United in pain.
A midlife sadness,
louder than a scream.
Take me away from this winter,
and voices cancelled by the rain.
When stillness descended,
the night…..ours to decide.
And what I loved
was the idleness of a moment with you.
Gathering words and stolen kisses
under candle – light.
Winter is going
My Pictures: Reflections of Harbin
Even in solid cold
I just can’t leave you.
Lonely lonely me.
Age of hope
My Picture: Harbin Snow.
The sky was black last night,
and so afflicted.
Stars stung to irritated gestures,
so unsleeping…..
Seeds of love scattered
from Manchester to Xinxiang.
Giving me an endless longing,
and hope for a fresh grace of an early dawn.
Xinxiang Blue
My Picture: Poetry and coffee this evening.
Back in Xinxiang
the coffee tastes good.
‘The Carpenters’ are signing about love,
which becomes lost in time.
Never to be smooth again.
Deep inside, a spring longing.
A shadow still wedged between the rocks, and the rising spring river.
Seared into my aching bones.
Always to linger,
and never to be free.
The music stops, it always does.
Vaguely, I hear a sound….
….. a sweet voice
….. a distant voice
“Come close, and follow me…..”
Pulled into a violet world,
surrounded by the noise of our origin.
I see you…
and my unfinished flight.
No snow in Harbin.
My Picture” Yesterday at Harbin Airport – due to snow in Henan…delays, delays and delays…..
They are calling for passengers to Pudong, those to Shenzhen are already too late.
One more person to be found for the flight to Quingdao….
…..still searching.
Under a concrete overhang I keep a stiff – upper lip, waiting for the call for Zhengzhou.
The lady with the beautiful voice tells me 16:55…. and to wait….
but she talks to anyone who will listen.
And now the people to Beijing are arriving,
with great expectancy and snowstorms behind them.
Harbin Airport
My Picture: Taken this evening at Harbin Airport.
Dark against the morning,
a chance meeting.
Cold air all around us,
ice and sadness now flown.
A spoken goodbye.
Last night in Harbin
fznor
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My Pictures: Taken today…I will fly back to Xinxiang tomorrow after 10 days in Harbin.
I travel with my thoughts
and the moments I find.
Legs grown warm from walking,
and re-presenting life.
Frozen Songhua, half-light
gives sweet solace……
From this wandering soul,
half-naked in twilight cold.
Darkness hides the sunset
My Pictures: Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War of World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Imperial Japan. I visited this museum today, just outside Harbin…it was harrowing….some of the pictures I took…are difficult to post here. The railway brought the people for experimentation, torture and death. Most of the ‘crimes’ were carried out by Japanese medical personal against the Chinese people. I wrote this poem shortly after I left the site:
Trees and sky darkened this morning.
Frost hardened tears,
a snake to the railway track.
I heard the pain, shout for a cure.
The doctors gave no refuge, no rest.
Thorns and needle pricks,
a bee pointed stinger.
Bare feet walking on ash covered ground,
fresh on the day.
Now, who tells this tale….
of snow cones in the dark
and souls left hanging from the ceiling.
Between the barbed wire and trees still bent…
all that is left of this dark protrusion
….. is rain filled graves and half-light streets.
To tell us how it was.
Walking the streets in Harbin
My Pictures: Harbin, China this evening.
A Wandering Poet 