An Idyll Heard in the Metro

by Yuqi Li

Everybody puts on a happy face today –
not necessarily smiling, but on which
frowns and wrinkles are smoothed by
an undertow of expectation, masquerading 
as cynicism. In public.
Tacit eye-contacts blink in and out
of the moving steel. There it is –
the modern forest of correspondences
whimsies unspeakable coyness
squeezes into the contraption 
embroidered with silver threads. 
A myriad of purposes reek of the rich or
the poor. Prayers are buried under shoe soles
devil perches on the lips. My child is going to 
leave school at four and we are taking
three days off can we look up and face 
the blue burden of divinity my dear
Bursts of bright spots, in eyes and mouths reflected,
ruffle the stippled composure of a bird on 
the low-definition screen
at the edge of vision. Is there a suppressed laugh
a shriek, an end to the voice of knowledge?
From the abyss the wind twists the muddy stairs 
to summer-tide
           We decide to go forward.


Yuqi Li holds an MA in English from UCL, and now lives in Hangzhou. She loves reading, travelling and writing poems at midnight.