Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 1999

Soft summer wind lifts girls’ sheer dresses into wings,
Pinks, reds, and golds winking and rippling through the air
Like babies cooing far away. 
They pose round-faced and porcelain 
Against the vastness of the cement square 
While cameras click, three of a family pose 
As if the world were made of butterflies. 

The Gate of Heavenly Peace, a fond mirage 
Guarded by the rotund face of Mao so large 
Even his wen is as big as a man’s head. 
Didn’t he say a hundred flowers would bloom 
Then smash them before the green broke through? 

Like the hope of ten years back 
When one sliver of light became a raging fire— 
One hundred thousand waved the red and gold, 
Chanted for a voice, heady with freedom, 
Raised here a goddess thirty feet high 
Of styrofoam and plaster, symbolizing liberty.

I saw her head fall, then the torch, 
Felt the slashes pierce her side, 
Heard tank chains clank across cement, 
Guns crackling indiscriminate, 
Cycle wheels askew and whirring, 
Their rider’s bloody glasses smashed and still 
They roll on blind with power 
Over all obstructions, even their own children. 

I know a student, both legs crushed that night 
Who in his wheelchair counts the ghosts, 
Waters his pink and red geraniums. 
But when he talks of wheeling up Mount Tai, 
I look deep into the place where wings grow 
And see something move and push toward the stars.