The Storm Of A Thousand Years

 

Cultural differences notwithstanding

We’re good at standing in the rain

Eating chicken on a stick together and

Laughing when a joke transmogrifies.

Things like me struggling with lukewarm beer

And de-toning your beautiful language

Have you howling louder than the sky.

 

Never have I heard thunder like this

And cultural differences notwithstanding

Neither have you is what you tell me.

Across the river, the lights of Wuchang

Face us – from humiliated high towers  

Green teardrops and red fall on the night ferry

The skyline we’ll see it smile again when the rain stops.

  

The temples let us in today but we didn’t pray

Or I should say you did and who was I to imply

You lie like I know I’ve been programmed to.

Fortune favours bold women and you objected

To that and said you preferred the term girl and I retracted

As the seer took your hand and told you

Secrets about your future I would never perceive.

 

Nothing between us but the rain and give or take

Some cultural differences which grow less important

In flooded shoes under broken umbrellas.

You say your toes will be cold for a thousand years

And I make promises I now regret for I know

You have met already this world’s all-seeing-eye

Yet my toes are tenderly forgetting too.

 

We’re good at standing in the rain

But when it stops we are lost and wet

And a thousand miles from the future.

Somewhere there are fights more glorious than ours

Chariots and cheering on a big screen

Hopefully ours will be seen I say and you snap

And swing your bag at a passer-by.

 

 Right there in the middle of the city, a field.

Noodle stalls watch suspiciously as we move

Through the chicken fog, spitting pans, and away

To a field of wet grass and electrified crickets.

Looking up at the sky you say it’s not gone

And I know you mean the storm so I do my part

For a start---try fixing the umbrella

 

We kiss under milk coffee mountains

Then discuss at length the future of pollution

Until an expressway comes, plucks out all our words

And vanishes in time with the fallow storm.

  

Before going home, we lie down in that field

Where notwithstanding our differences

We drown and die regretfully together.