Harbin: crowds boil with commotion, the day’s crackling fat.
The trains have rendered White to Red, Russia devoured
its own students, night rendered superfluous by electricity, hand-in-hand
neon and Stalin forging the students of Russia.

Unable to afford to eat that day the poet had no choice but wait,
wait for a half-eaten egg wrapped in its juan bing, the wrapped-up old country mother
in from who-knows-where, the bitterly cursing old father,
neon and Stalin forging waiting-time’s crackling fat

for the poet half a lifetime of eating next to nothing, a half-eaten juan bing
offhandedly wrapped: offhandedness does not distinguish, the white day’s
offhandedness fattened by thirty hours, time’s next round of punishment
waiting for a derailed train to depart en route to yet more waiting.

(2011/6/18 Harbin; 7/12/2011 Shanghai)