Gravestones, Hong Kong - Five Fragments

Down from a heavily-trafficked road
the Chinese cemetery
is a silent
hillside city
terraces of granite and marble
gravestones
with photographs hardly weathered

I climb down
as rows of faces
mounted on stone
watch me move
old man, young woman, child
all unmoving
open-eyed
a silent gallery
raising my fear
about to send me fleeing
up the steep slope.
_____________

In this city of dead
I imagine myself the only life
hunted by relentless ghosts

the harsh wasteland
offers no sanctuary
the tombstones
are obstacles to flight
opportunity for ambush

the uninvolved spectators
beyond caring
offer no aid

I entertain the white bleakness
of death.
________________

Row on row of empty niches in the wall
only one is plastered over
and covered with a photograph
a woman tapes a plastic cup
filled with red flowers
to that plaque
over her husband's ashes
a glazed photograph of his face
gazes out
on two people burning candles
in a used soda can
and a silk flower left
in an old medicine bottle.
___________________

Where gravestones
are blackened with age
the inscriptions faint
the portraits in weathered marble
made gentle and mysterious with time
bodies are planted in the earth
sousl looking out
to the misty island mountains.

__________________

Behind the row of monuments
the retaining wall crumbles
moss grows in the cracks
a vine creeps down over mortar
a black and white butterfly
hovers over orange blossoms
ants drag the bodies of dead insects
making traffic patterns on the rock.