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
joe morris
17th April 2024
Clik The Mouse
15th April 2024
Mike Bartram
15th April 2024
joe morris
14th April 2024
Mike Bartram
11th April 2024
joe morris
11th April 2024
Alex Saynor
9th April 2024
Denys E. W. Jones
8th April 2024
joe morris
8th April 2024
Mike Bartram
3rd April 2024
Crispin’s Corner
In Memoriam
Kick It Out & Christmas Truce
Latest Comments
19th March 2024 at 8:00 am
Hi Crispin. Chris Sutton on the radio has gone for a Chelsea v Coventry final. As we know anything can happen in the Cup, and I reckon we can go to the final.
We’re still in with a chance of the play offs too, so lots to go for.
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19th March 2024 at 7:41 am
Hey Kev
Let the masses drool over their odds on City v Unted Final, but who knows how pressure can hit.
Cov and Chels will be rightly labelled as having no chance..but hey …stranger things have happened..
so Chelsea v Coventry…that’s the Final for us!
Best
C
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29th January 2024 at 10:03 pm
Hi Crispin,
How are you doing mate? Yes, you’re probably right but hey football is all about emotion and passion and I just love writing about the game. I try to keep my poetry to a reasonable length but there’s so much to write about the game and its literature just lends itself naturally to poetry. Sometimes I just get completely carried and I do apologise for the length of my poetry but it’s a great thrill to be associated with Football Poets.
Cheers mate
Joe
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10th January 2024 at 7:52 pm
You’re right of course Joe but…..it’s actually more of a big welcome break for everyone who is not into Premier League ..I’m talking fans of EFL National League and below…..
Btw …is this actually your longest poem ever !?
Best
Crispin
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8th January 2024 at 4:45 pm
Thanks!
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8th January 2024 at 10:42 am
There’s something so evocative and nostalgic for football fans the world over, in ‘revisiting’ old lost grounds.
Occasionally some remnants remain, with perhaps part of a wall or part or a stand or thre shape of a terrace, but often they are only still there in faded images and in our heads..
Great stuff Graham
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4th January 2024 at 10:13 am
A great idea and well executed. Thanks Graham.
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19th November 2023 at 1:45 pm
Thanks Gacina, glad you liked it, and I have just posted a new one about our points deduction…
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7th November 2023 at 6:34 pm
Today B.B.C post on F.B was titled:Premier League reduced to 18 clubs? I really think it may be interesting to see if this would be Everton’s nightmare and this poem is well suited for this concern.If there would be more difficult battle to stay if there were 18 teams.Great poem and somehow true.
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6th November 2023 at 4:43 pm
Ashington FC have launched a £50,000 Crowdfunder appeal to meet the increased costs of winning promotion last season, to pay for urgent stadium improvements, travel costs and equipment
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