The stench

from your neighbour’s city pig

stymies our attempts

to appreciate your delicate,

confident calligraphy.

Your son painstakingly reproduces

the latest line in Party hagiography

with his considered opinion:

"Mao was 70 per cent right,

30 per cent wrong."

That bare third encompassed,

the world now knows,

silencing the brushes of calligraphers,

blacking out the vision of painters,

murdering or starving

twenty million citizens,

the lucky ones

whose torture ended with death.

Today, your boy sleeps easy:

the Party "has corrected its mistakes".

A sliver of freedom reaches even Bijie.

Now, you and funerals

give colour to this stinking town.

The cage rises.

Like a single person,

the crowd draws its breath.

Behind the metal ribs,

pallor blurs the prisoners’ faces.

The cage halts.

Inside, three children

glance at one another,

try out smiles, titter.

Then their eyes rove

for parents below.

Reassured,

in best Sunday casuals

or pressed medieval fantasies,

townspeople and day-trippers

chuckle with their ancestors.