It comes at three and the Rhône runs
upstream. All the quay lamps disappear
by Pont du Trinquetaille at quarter past.

Those awake undream the long miles home
and those dreaming learn to walk again
as all glass turns back to breath and sand.

So much depends upon the undoing
that the five loaves and two fishes
are left untouched, undivided.

So much depends upon the light of Arles
that the sun and sea are reborn
as new planets of yellow and blue.

But what’s done is undone:
the Rhône downstream, lamps ablaze.
The ominous is nothing but a backward miracle.

Twelve baskets of leftovers.
A bandaged ear, and what seems to be Mount Fuji.
When it goes, there is a great calm.

 

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Kit Fan’s first book Paper Scissors Stone won the inaugural International Hong Kong
University Poetry Prize. His poems have widely appeared in the poetry magazines in UK and
abroad. He is working on his second book As Slow As Possible.