Praying for nothing but not toppled, nothing but not fallen
nothing but a reed be picked up when it bruises,
a smoldering wick not be snuffed out deliberately.
Before the years' curtain wall of noise and annoyance,
a man, gradually becomes intimate to a music
with slowly elongating voice of raindrops.
Every and each thread of glistening sad metal string
breaks, into pieces, spatters still
tears of no way back, they are
in the mixed voices of wheels, pedestrians, traffic signals,
huge flash screens, steel-concrete buildings, city lights...
model a symphony and draw randomly a silver world
on the glass walls of every and each skyscraper.

       Trans. by Tim Lilburn and Xuan Yuan and the author