Welcome to Hong Kong!
Welcome to Hong Kong!
A futuristic society
Hyper IT reality,
“That barren rock”
Of imperial stock
Quoth Lord Palmerston
In eighteen hundred and forty one;
Three thousand people living on land
And two thousand floating on sampans,
Confucian, Buddhist, Taoist,
Just part of the cultural list
Cowed by the British gun,
Watching the moon and sun
And living side by side
With the diurnal tide,
But welcome to Hong Kong!
Land of fragrant harbours
And leafy perfumed arbours
Where considered imperial opium wars
Open the gates but close the doors
To China’s infinite perception,
For this opiate inception
Fills London’s coffers with tawdry gold
As opium is bought and sold;
So welcome to Hong Kong!
Then around the world in eighty days
With Kowloon’s lights now all ablaze,
Where train and tram and gas and steam
Make the Jubilee a dream,
For Victoria’s globe is painted red
‘Till Europe’s no-mans-land’s bled dead;
Then Chiang Kai Shek and Mao Tse Tung,
And then Japan’s imperial sun
Rising over Hong Kong’s fields
Where the Union Jack is forced to kneel,
But welcome to Hong Kong!
A new millennium
Seven million
People,
Where every building
Is a laser steeple,
With bird song in the mulberry trees
And twenty thousand cruising taxis
Touting for custom by bougainvillea flowers
While traffic jams pass on the hours
While multi freeways ride the waves
With high rise blocks on bamboo staves
Where artisans clean traffic cones
And burial grounds have millions of bones
In a vertical-landscape mountain-rock
And high rise urban tower block
For families with cramped living space
And where no inch of space is waste
Where islands become airports
Where mountain sides are sold and bought
Where banana trees and vegetable plots
Soften any uncultivated spot
And where no litter
Embitters
Any public space
Despite the race
For success
And escape from stress
On Hong Kong’s flying highways
And where Feng Shui’s
Iridescent water falls
Run through the latest shopping malls
And all the finance housing banks
And all those serried polite ranks
Of hustling, bustling workers,
None of which I know are shirkers
In a can-do world of modernity
That stares out negativity
But also respects old tradition
Where Taoist tradition can marry Mammon,
So welcome to Hong Kong!
With Football Focus in the streets
On giant public high rise screens
With Tiger Economy back on its feet
An occasional beggar making ends meet
Bent double in supplication
Unlike Britain’s multiplication
Of beggars scoring smack
And the kids now smoking crack cocaine
Under grey sky drizzling British rain
As Britannia reinvents itself
In the global battle to create more wealth,
So welcome to Hong Kong!
Where the tertiary economy
Stretches its ecology
Where land is taken from the ocean
Where global warming is a notion
That is viewed as occidental thinking,
And while Bangladesh is slowly sinking
Into the Pacific Rim,
See how Hong Kong’s vim
Continues to ride the waves,
So leaving Europe in a daze,
So welcome to Hong Kong!
Dynamic land of contradiction
Where any job or situation
Is rarely ever vacant,
An air-conditioned city latent
With optimism, money and wealth
Where education is just like health
An admired responsibility
Where ambition is universal and free
And where anyone can be Mr Lee,
Rich and powerful and famous
But behind the scene, anonymous,
So farewell admired Hong Kong!
Apologies – I’ve just been on a study visit – but there is a one line football reference.
About This Site
Welcome to Football Poets -- a club for all football poets, lovers of football and lovers of (alternative) poetry. Discover poets in every league from respected internationals at the top of their game to young hopefuls in the school playground.
Publish your football poems here and then discuss them with your team mates and fans. We're archived by The British Library, so your masterpieces are in the safe hands of a world-class keeper. What a result!
My Account
Latest Poems
Stuart Butler
2nd February 2023
Denys E. W. Jones
30th January 2023
joe morris
29th January 2023
Crispin Thomas
25th January 2023
joe morris
23rd January 2023
Denys E. W. Jones
23rd January 2023
joe morris
14th January 2023
joe morris
8th January 2023
kevin raymond
7th January 2023
joe morris
6th January 2023
Crispin’s Corner
In Memoriam
Kick It Out & Christmas Truce
Latest Comments
5th December 2022 at 8:11 pm
Stuart, you are not alone, in your dichotomy of doubt
but without dissention
you stand alone
in hogging our attention!
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16th November 2022 at 11:04 am
[Football on soiled turf]
This is a wonderful phrase which I shall be using from now on!
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15th November 2022 at 3:54 pm
Well said Crispin. One of the reasons for The Ball 2022/23 is exactly this – that FIFA need to know. The Ball is essentially a petition to FIFA to honour their commitments to the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework. They signed up; they should act. The Qatar tournament takes the World Cup in the opposite direction to that commitment. And 2026 looks like it’ll be even worse.
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8th November 2022 at 2:06 pm
Hi Guys
Re ‘Lets Boycott Qatar ‘ poem
You probably hate me banging on..and problably know (like me) that my/your not watching the World Cup in Qatar will make no difference.
Of course it won’t. That’s not the point.
OK someone might possibly eventually publish a minimal drop in terrestrial TV viewer numbers, but I fear that is unlikely.
But please above all, do go on writing poems about the World Cup, as/you we have always done. I hate to think a poem or two of mine might l make you feel bad about comenting on a game or country …or that I’ve put you all off about wanting to contribute.
So we’d love to hear from you and read your thoughts and observations, as ever on what’s going on.
Some of us have been here since Football Poets website birth/inception for the Euros 2000 ….
All my best wishes
Crispin
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18th October 2022 at 10:06 am
Shoot! (Something we’ve also been screaming in vain at our team all season !)
Great memories Joe . Before Shoot, it was Roy of the Rovers comic too, dropping through my letterbox.
Anxiously waiting each week to see if they survived in the mexcian jungle after an ambush..or a pre-season earthquake!
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3rd October 2022 at 8:32 pm
Thanks for the kind words Sharon. Yes, it was a shame with Billy Shako, but with five subs now being allowed, he might yet make it off the bench. Even if it’s just a cameo to close out a poem.
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2nd October 2022 at 1:49 pm
John, your new book is an absolute delight and more please. It’s a shame ‘Swapping Shirts With Shakespeare’ never made it off the bench, but quality football poets light up the writing fields like Roman candles. Go well.
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4th September 2022 at 12:42 pm
Great memories Greg. Took me right back.
Today I stand on a small terrace in the hills where I live watching Forest Green Rovers in L1, and keep up with Chelsea on highlights. It’s a far cry and a world away from those times when I lived as a child within walking distance of ‘The Bridge’ – just off the Ifield Road, which led to Fulham Road. The Blues were rubbish for so long, but we loved them and somehow we stayed in the old First Division for so many seasons. And of course we got to see Greavesie at his impudent best, scoring goals for fun. Mad unpredictable games where we’d score 4 and let in five.
The looming floodlights in the dark and mist on magic night games. The big games when the ground heaved.
I don’t think we ever realized how magical and incredible it was back then. The atmosphere and arriving there so early – like you said.. just to make sure you got in. Back when Bovril, tea and cake and roasted peanuts for sixpence a back were just about all on offer.
Good times.
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4th September 2022 at 12:37 pm
see above
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18th August 2022 at 10:20 am
To put it politely!
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