Written By Cheuk Ki Chan

Fifth month, the first. Ninth month, the ninth. 

The air is crisp and clear.

No smell of incense in the shrine,

A quieting calm without cheer.

No chatter or crying of relatives,

Only the sound of the broom’s bristles. 

The people here are not there to give

But there to watch and whistle

No offerings to be made, no food nor meat,

The metallic altar lies empty.

No filial children who bow and pray,

Only the rustle of ghosts, faces grey.

They say a plague has spread among

The living, a disease that’s made of crowns.

Green plants between brick cracks have sprung,

But warm bodies are nowhere to be found.

The ghost lays in his paper house,

No joss paper or banknotes have been burnt.

Another year of hunger,

Unsatiated and abandoned.

An emptiness inside him,

Envy and want replacing

His once-joyful features, which dimmed,

As his colour and light faded.

His neck began to lengthen, 

The hunger was burning within.

His belly expanded and swelled as

A deep obsession grew.

The gates opened with a glare

Under the judgement of the seventh moon.

The ghost drifted out there to the mortal plain, 

Where his salvation will come soon.

But coldness was what he received,

In the land of the living—of humans,

Disregard stroking his obsession,

The need for that sweet veneration.

The people walked unknowingly amongst

The moaning misery of the dead.

Their suffering ignored and unknown,

Their voices clamped shut by neglect.

Salvation, at last!

The rusted old bin, where

An old woman dropped each sheet of paper,

folded and inlaid with gold and silver.

The embers beckoned them to come. 

All at once, the ghosts clawed in

With the savagery of feral beasts,

Of desperation to remove and rinse

This addiction writhing and shaking them.

He grappled and shook, but was pushed off,

By the howling spirits, with their needle necks

Unable to swallow and fill this emptiness,

No warmth or joss, to be had.

And all night long the howls were replaced,

By cries of sorrow and melancholy.

As lonely as the glowing moon

Who watches down with pity.

But even the moon bids, her silver light

Forced away by the rising sun,

Whose molten colours pierce the land,

Silent, cleared of everyone.

No mantra or prayer,

Of gods or buddhavistas,

Can calm this anguish within the ghost,

Who wandered back to the closing gates,

Alone, forgotten, and unknown.