King of Kowloon

In your white vest and blue flip-flops,
you wandered about in the fierce sun,

a can of black paint in your hand.
We read your family history on lamp-posts:

your escape from Liantang, your ancestral home,
settling for Pink Shek in Kowloon.

You hailed Wen Tianxiang and Sun Yat-sen,
charged the Queen for usurping your land.

新中國皇‭ ‬曾榮華‭ ‬曾福彩
中英‭ ‬香港‭ ‬政府

A self-declared king for fifty years, painting
all over the colony – a city where the British

lived on mid-Levels like paradise birds
and the Chinese sweated, selling meats

in wet markets but Oh! the freedom
to march and shout, to do what you did!

Defiance on the lamp-posts,
defiance at the ferry pier.

撐住五十年不變
叉燒‭ ‬飯碗‭ ‬撐住!

Your furious characters on the red pillar box
kindle in us an identity we have always known.