YOTSUMOTO, Yasuhiro

the ridge

is a woman

lying down

soft skin

of the country

caressed with eyes

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1.

I wonder if Xi Jinping

wakes up in the middle of night and

thinks of Hong Kong

or if he would not

feel anything like the foot of an elephant

stamping upon the thorns of roses.

The two activists who were arrested

look like my son and daughter,

his jaggy head, and her long black hair.

The Japanese government

will certainly ‘continue to watch the situation carefully’.

The freedom of another country would not bring them too many votes.

The former suzerain

is too much caught up with its own divorce battle

to be bothered by such a thing as democracy.

Unlike Nanjing in 1938

or Prague in 1968,

Hong Kong in 2019 is right here and now,

staining the hands of all of us with its fresh blood.

Deserting them is tantamount

to betraying the future of our own sons and daughters.

What can we do

other than praying?

Poetry is so frustrating!