Margaret D. Gill - Green Reader...

...The Poem Says It All

The poem extract below is both my green statement and impact statement. In essence, we all got responsibility, but some more than others.

“Across from Victoria Harbour Hong Kong”

I

Victoria Harbour

So much beauty

And so much blue.

How many dreams

Of a technic tomorrow touch?

So the silver running

Of cool of air co

Or the camera’ s true monstrosity.

Cool images you cell from

Cell to high rise cell.

But I see Sam Sung

Only dimly now.

This gauze

That is not morning

Drapes the edges of

Olympus now.

And I breathe cautiously,

Each breath a filtered prayer

As ships go calmly

Through the blue air.

II

A ferry coming home,

Expelling and again

uploading tourists.

Each camera saves

That chip of memory.

Visibility 200 yards,

A blue so true,

So true the edges of you certainty

Dissolve.

The only mountains now

I know for sure,

For sure, I say,

Are in the art I saw

At Tsim Sha Sui.

III

There is a sea,

This is an island.

I suppose a necessary

Though awkward beauty

Shaped these blue trees.

Yet I long for Victoria Harbour

Green before Victoria

Today, pollution turned

The sun to silver,

Polythene texture.

Visibility making ghosts

Of ships in the harbour.

Water reflecting chrome,

At night, technicolour.

It was just like

A science fiction movie,

Jane Li said to me

Newspaper op eds say

Sea so sick if someone slipped

They die of the sink in.

Bacteria so thick

Only the slick of oil lives.

Oh Victoria, Victoria!

You not the only sinner,

But ah really have ta tell yah

You was bad fah true

November 2008, Hong Kong

Copyright © 2011 by Margaret Gill

About the Author

Margaret D. Gill is a scholar, critic and published and performance poet who teaches fundamentals of written English at the University of the West Indies (Cave Hill). Kamau Brathwaite describes her as “One of the very finest poets in the Caribbean—and not only in English. Brilliant (and therefore important) a literary critic as any (of the too few) writing out of the Caribbean today.” Twice winner of the Frank Collymore Literary Award (1998, 1st prize, and 2006, 2nd prize), Margaret was International Visiting Writer 2007 at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKB) and one of the two adjudicators of the HKB English Poetry Writing Competition 2007. She is now an Honorary Fellow in Writing by HKB. Her poetry has been anthologized in several works, including Bim, Aftermath: Best of Third-World Poets (1977) and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse (2005). Her works of poetry are Alternative Songs from the Kingdom of the Lilies (1998 Frank Collymore manuscript), Lyric You (Intelek International: Bridgetown, 2000) and Machinations of a Feminist (2006 Frank Collymore manuscript). Margaret’s writing is influenced by the fact that her mother wrote and her father loved poetry and knew large tracts of it by heart, and she received her first award for poetry at 14 years old when she won second prize in the Shankar’s International Children Poetry Competition in India.

Margaret is one of the performers appearing at Green Readings 2011 at Folkestone Park & Marine Reserve on Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 3:30 p.m. Green Readings is a trademark of ArtsEtc.