June 4, 1989 - Tiananmen Square Protests
Plaza de Tiananmen. 4 de Junio, 1989. © 1989 Stuart Franklin/MAGNUM
Shadows convening
on the moon. Dragons
walking through the mist
of ten thousand dynasties.
Red-veined, jagged stones,
civil war, peasant stained,
courtyards scared by
ten thousand deceits
Children chanting slogans
from little red books
blazing the countryside:
“The East Is Red!”
Goddess of Democracy--
stripped naked, beaten,
raped. Crushed by tanks--
unofficially MIA.
Stars flare out and clouds
mushroom across the East.
Rivers swell with sorrow,
the edges of an empire tilt.
The earth shakes and swallows
ten thousand ancestral tombs.
A nation exhausted waits
for the Mandate of Heaven.