Photo by Gloria Keh

All rights reserved

Photo taken at Anna's home in Pudong, Shanghai

Lights in the city

to Guido Chiarelli, Turin urban lighting designer

The sun sets and the lights rise

People going home late from work

Cross the illuminated streets

Everywhere in the city

Windows are a symbol of light.

I sit at ease in a store

Drinking coffee, my mind is turned on by the light

Thinking of Turin, Italy

A city full of elegance

At the festival Mole Antonelliana

It lights up the night

At the same time as the Oriental Pearl Tower.

A view of Shanghai from the 16th floor:

The stars are shining brightly on the Huangpu River

Without Guido Chiarelli

Without Franklin Edison

Cities would be but little black dots on the earth.

Anna Keiko, China

English translation by Germain Droogenbroodt

in cooperation with the author

二

City lights

Walking on Gongxiu Road at night

Fruit shop, bun shop, bright as daylight

Crowded shopping malls

Beside the river, on the bridge

One can't tell day from night

Where friends and children

Enjoy dinner under the lights

All due to the city's illuminations

To which Guido Chiarelli contributed

We should always remember those

Who work hard for our society

Like commemorating our ancestors

Anna Keiko, China

#lightsforthecity

Anna Keiko is a Chinese poet, president of the Shanghai Huifeng Literature Association.

Her poetry has been published in many national and international magazines. She has

participated at several prestigious international poetry festivals

BEAM OF LIGHT

Into a house without doors or windows

dives a beam of light

cleaving the darkness

shining into the inky void

Hello, light

Your clarity

grants the formless air substance

You hang perpendicular

like a glaringly pure pillar

a burning crystal

or the winter ice

Do you lead to freedom

to a sky where wings unfold

You sparkle silently

as if to say:

why don’t you try

to take hold and climb me

go along down me to escape your gloom

Freedom and imprisonment

are only separated by a thin metal sheet

I extend my hand

into the empty beam

a bloodless palm

ignites a full red

The remaining blood

flowing in a vermillion translucence

melding into the light itself

That cold light that cannot be grasped

suddenly becomes warm

as if an electric current zapped through my being

Hello, light

Please lead me out of my sealed house

to embrace the outside world

I close my eyes

bearing up weightless light

Darkness breaks with a clattering sound

that sound becomes

ten thousand more beams of light

as if made of  all the lightning in the world

from every direction shooting towards me

through the worldly dimness

silently, it comes, but glorious

In the quiet

I become a beam of light 

Zhao Lihong

#lightsforthecity

Zhao Lihong, born in Shanghai, China in 1952, is a poet, proser and chairman of Shanghai International Poetry Festival. He won the Golden Key of Smederevo Prize for poetry in 2013, and International Poetry Prize of Mihai Eminescu International Academy in 2019.

Lights of the City

——Dedicated to Impression and Poetry

Throughout each city neighborhood

every nook and cranny sparkles

Where small old houses once stood

tall buildings are now like eagles

soaring sky high

Many a star-like window goggles

while rain falls from the moonless sky

with drops shining like crystals

and diamonds with blue glow

In the streets folks freely move about

like drifting clouds that come and go

Memories fade in and out

like the blooming and wilting of flower

And like tides that ebb and flow

Is the traffic from hour to hour

The hasty footsteps measure

many a city's landscape feature

while leaving life's subtle texture

deeply engraved along the way

Ah, I want to lay

my lonely and burning heart bare

listening to your heart with great care

dancing shrouded in your majesty

and abandoning myself in your glory

Let in rain misty light rays flood

And gentle vale springs croon

Let the life's tenderest tune

blending with my soul's boiling blood

fully mushroom

Just because in your blue rays

my passion is set ablaze

and freely does my love bloom

Mona (Netherlands)

#lightsforthecity

Mona, borne LI Minming, a Chinese writer and poetresiding in the Netherlands, is

currently a media columnist for the Dutch newspaper United Times. is the founding

Chairwoman of the European Chinese New Immigrant Writers Association.her poems

and novels and essays have won her several prestige prizes.

Lights of the City

The City Light

Is the urban guardian

Sometime indistinct, sometime bright

Keeping warm the city

To prevent it from sleeping when darkness on site

Twinkle, twinkle in the dark

The deeper the night, the brighter its light

Hence the night walkers never be afraid nor get lost

And the confused take it as a guide

When everything falls asleep

City Light guards the world's dreamland

No matter the status is high or low

Its care is equally to everyone’s hand

A variety of designs in fashion and up to time

Embellishes the city

By contributing silently their heat and light

Let’s dedicate our sincerity

To the Pioneers of Urban Light Design   

 Jinghao (UK)

#lightfortheciy

Jinghao, UK is a British Chinese, awarded many times, consultant of the United Nations "World Ecology" magazine.

Paying tribute 

Darkness obscures the tourist's path

And one can only hold the companion‘s hand (to know his position)

You filled the streets with light,

Designing various bulbs

In your luminous area

Painting the ripped clouds in neon and flying dreams

Even an ordinary street lamp has got a variety of forms.

The reflection of the river

Flows with the charming flavor of the night.

Dream fulfillment 

Poetic ornamentation

Dance hall, movie theater, coffee shop, model show

Light dizziness 

City lights design pioneer GUIDO CHIARELLI,

You enchant the midnight.

I devote myself to loving you

And let the warm colors

Brighten up an intoxicating smile.

My skyscrapers open their doors

Paying their respects to you.

  Xue Xixiang, China

#lightsforthecity

Xue Xixiang, China

Member of Chinese Writers Association and Chinese Musicians Association. He has been a creative member of the military art troupe and an instructor of the military academy. He has published more than 20 monographs, such as poems and songs, essays, reports and non-fiction, novels, films and television films. Oriental TV Station, Shanghai TV Station and military academies jointly held three concerts for his special works, and CCTV made follow-up reports. Hundreds of his works won awards both inside and outside the military.

English translation: co-translated by Keiko Anna and Iuliana

Street lights

to Guido Chiarelli, Turin urban lighting designer

Light up a light for whom

Light a light for yourself too

The sound of fire

Born out of silence

More pure than words

My gaze is unrecognizable through the light

What kind of fascination brings pain?

The color of human life, growing pale

No matter how much I want to remember or forget

After having lit thousands of lights

I find myself also a street lamp

 Yu Nong, China

#lightsforthecity

Yu Nong (China), born in 1966 in Yixing, Jiangsu Province, now lives in Shanghai, poet, president of World Poetry Magazine, editor-in-chief of World Poetry Network Shanghai, has poems published in China Culture Newspaper, Liberation Army Newspaper, Liberation Army Literature and Art, Star Poetry Journal, etc. He won the 20th Literary Award of Naji Oman, Lebanon, the award of Shanghai Citizen Poetry Festival, the 4th Boao International Poetry Festival "Poet of the Year Award".

"Eiffel Tower Lights Out Early"

Eiffel Tower lights out early night

Not only Paris

The whole world falls into contemplation

War and peace change year by year

Turn to be Karma

That ghost is all-pervasive

it can't stand light

The lights go out from top to bottom

With the darkness of the mid-air

Down from the tower

Ebb tide after high tide

Faint sound of shelling

Falling sound of destroyed wall and house

Pipe burst

The smell of oil being spilled

That so called R-U war symbol

Becomes a new spell

This is an early warning of human beings to confess the world

Go to Notre Dame De Paris

Strike the bell again

Pray for the top of the city tower

Rekindle the light of peace that never goes out all night

May the world

return to peace forever

Fang Liping, Shanghai, China

#lightsforthecity

Fang Liping (China):

graduated from Peking University. Scholar, editor, professor, poet. He has published many academic monographs, poems and essays. Member of Shanghai Writers Association, Member of China Musicians Association, Member of Shanghai Literary Critics Association, etc.

Dancing Light in reorganization

At dusk
Fantasy is a beam of light and shadow
gliding across the streets and lanes
shuttling between high-risers and mentions
circling on the windowsills and pavilions
like language of changing light

Always feels in the deep distance,
 a wandering lantern

Picking up the eyes on the flagstone road, completely
sprinkling into the air above the city
shining with stars

A city
a sleeping stone in its origin, waken up

stacking up the dreams of ancestors from generations 

With the context of electric lights, extending into the sky
Rubbing the light from the city in the old days
dripping mottled, reborn
climbing the vines of light and clicking on the future

There are streams of consciousness cutting through time and

space

There are words of starlight colliding fantasies

There are cross-border art psychic

 The dance of light in the reorganization of history,

modernity, and future

The darkness being the best explanation
when night falls
All fantasies melt           

but the light of city
a flower of art, shinning in the world

Guan Long Gen, China 

#lightsforthecity

Guan Longgen lives in Shanghai, China. He is the Executive vice President of ACC Shanghai Huifeng Literary Association. His poems are published on various websites.