Four Chinese Poets © 08 Fraser Harrison

Several Sundays ago, listening to the news while I shaved (my soap scented with essence of grapefruit),
I heard the headline ‘Four Chinese poets under arrest’, and delayed to learn their crime.
which was to set up a magazine in some faraway, unheard-of-province where it would ‘liberalize literature’
They’d been jailed without charge, their office ransacked, the magazine aborted before it’s first issue.
Their address book had been confiscated, meaning, presumably, their friends could now expect the midnight knock.
Eager to know more – their names for a start, ages, genders – I resolved to hear the bulletin after Desert Island Discs,
whose castaway amused Sue by requesting nail clippers as his luxury, but lunch was called
(roast chicken, my children’s favourite) and I forgot. Throughout the afternoon these nameless, probably unpronounceable poets
kept popping into my mind, but never at times coinciding with the news, and next morning as I shaved,
the radio made no mention of the four and their heinous mag, nor did our paper on the doorstep.
I listened out all week, checked the foreign pages, even thought of ringing Amnesty, but heard nothing further.

End of story