its voice faded, yet trembling still at the heart’s edge.
I wander now outside that summer,
passing through rows of rising and falling black-and-white corridors.
I am mature enough to face winds from every direction.
Steering clear of that summer, this noon,
I guard alone a small window steeped in philosophy,
dust still quivers among the broom flowers,
panels of light lie collapsed on the ground,
butterflies cling to pollen’s bright lexicon, flying through shadows.
I adorn the window lattice with branches purified by white foam,
fold a 1919 newspaper into a pale stallion,
let it be encircled by wary, scattered seeds.
Let geckos ignite golden lanterns; the clam king, post-climax,
clenches the spider plant’s slender fingers.
I am arranging a simple rite, a nostalgic atmosphere,
hand beneath the pillow, caressing the roar of waves.
I remember us walking hand in hand through white seaside alleys,
the profound dreams we shared and deepened,
shadows panting over blossoms,
the dense illusions and voices around us.
I remember that summer, a many-eared stalk of wheat falling into water,
the secret pricked by your finger, the bathtub’s hue,
the color of your eyes when you loved me,
how you always closed my eyes with a hint of worry.
That summer when everything slipped away
I kept hearing water’s escape:
from our hands, our eyes,
between junipers and cattails,
from my big black comb and noon’s thirsty slumber.
That summer left us behind, our love
like two white stones risen from water, radiant, pure.
Still, it is the same tranquil noon, you lie awake in dreams,
a leaf adrift on time’s waves.
I tiptoe through extinguished constellations; a small window
unfolds like a butterfly’s blood-filled wings.
In your distance, I become your beautiful and solitary bride,
poised in May’s silent candlelit stillness, waiting for you to wake.
Late Autumn on Paper
Between hands, paper and brush, between soul and flying birds
lie shadows drifting in silent transition
White crags, white winds, and figures in the water
splash foam against the boat sides, keeping a sober distance
from the drinkers aboard
Heartbeats beneath the waves ring clear and plain
late autumn, mountains loom high, the moon dwindles faint
Beneath damp heavy curtains, sleepers lost to day and night
bend their knees slightly, bracing against the core of dreams
In woods bathed in crescent moonlight, wanderers returning from revelry
hasten home with hats pressed tight, clinging to lingering warmth
Lost travellers shout across the stream
echoes mimic one another, like a man and his own inner self
Thick mist drips down bamboo leaves
leaning a staff by the water’s edge
weeping eases the ache of the soul, yet silence stretches boundlessly vast
No one may cross its realm, nor add to nor take from its essence
from beneath the hat spill endless lingering doubts
Doves spread wings and fly away
while crows plunge headlong to the ground, upsetting water flasks and gauges
Still some will climb higher peaks through pouring rain
drink deep the darkness of a whole year, and meet pure solitude
When trains rumble past the valley, verses flow unbidden from their lips
heedless of unseen listeners
or swarms of stars swirling before their eyes
Where history lies laid flat
place lamps, letters, and a few worn old garments
Such days are few, the fragrance of roses still lingers amid dust
while heavy frost and shadows settle upon dark treetops
Things in May
Things in May come all too sudden,
as if they have not yet learned to keep balance,
surrounded by country folk, they are questioned again and again.
A red-breasted bird flies from weeds to treetops;
all things far away keep it warm.
Trains cut across the damp countryside,
passengers sitting with their backs to the way ahead.
Once past a certain age,
to go forward is to retreat — this truth he knows well.
After farewells, the station sinks into instant gloom,
empty and clean, as if just washed by water.
Two friends head home side by side, chatting softly,
will someone call them back suddenly?
All overlooked scenes mirror on the window pane,
noon has not come, nor the despair of midnight.
How long must we watch for something to emerge —
things stir, then fade away: trees, people, drifting dust,
tiny fragments yet always tinged with warmth.
Before long, all books will be read through,
before long, even drinking wine bears its cost,
before long, rain drifts like wispy white steam,
hovering above treetops shrouded in deepening dusk.
Those most casual trifles lean close,
like ears pressed softly against your door.
Things of May, near and far, gather at once
on the moving glass. A rain dissolves them all,
as if someone has just wept silently,
only the breath of fish lingers still in flooded fields,
it feels as if we still sit in late-night taverns,
drinking wine and reciting poems,
while your fair wives lie fast asleep upstairs.
Passing Through a Real Summer
Passing through a real summer, the clouds lingering in the mountains
are dyed with the colours of forests and wildflowers
before flood arrives, a glimmer of light
has already pierced through the darkness of that marsh land
Between the marsh and the cliffs
on that dazzling desolate beach
when the sunlight deepens the mole on your face
I’m willing to let you come closer, I’m willing to be acquainted with you
When rocks fill the empty evenings by the seaside
the sea water is limitless, thunder rumbles in the eagle’s nest
our floors are filled with the white marks of snails
those who pass through the marsh before the wind rises will become our first guests
A summer passes in an instant, the murmuring of gentle water on the left side of night
is the continuous offering of the earth to the ocean
the south wind, carrying soil, transforms hidden happiness
the losses of a summer will gradually be settled
The red flag hangs low, in the reflection of salt on the marsh
damp newspapers are curling, hiding summer’s insect eggs
the oysters trodden underfoot turn into lamps on our heads in the blink of an eye
we are the only humans in front of another world
Herding rocks into the sea, the ears underground
hear the impending silence, on evenings when no bottled messages arrive
we will collect brown driftwood, put away blurry diaries
and when cold rain brightens the lamps, termites will swarm in our home
Autumn will leave us with vast vistas and contemplation, clutching a handful of seeds of death
at high noon, the shimmering waves will reflect on the wooden fence
I will lean against the door, drinking water, too tired to speak
a child will be granted to me, sleeping peacefully behind the shimmering waves
Living Through an Imaginary Summer
To live through an imaginary summer, trees begin to take
the bearing of rocks. Those cherished shrubs of yours
are lit time and again by car lamps, draped with tassels
up where sunlight rolls down, toward the close of September
bees and butterflies wage scattered skirmishes beneath a monotonous clear sky
the last cicada chirps are chased away, then turn into rain
glimmering mist and ripe fruits amid the drizzle
Hands stained with grass sap, you stand in an old courtyard
a soft drizzle takes you by surprise
making you cease plucking poisonous berries with your lips
you watch birds flying low, bereft of their bounty in rain
and learn that weariness is never an excuse
ere long you shall compose poems of flawless grace
as if placing humanity’s finest children among thickets
leaving supper behind, then walking far away
Time scatters your fancies, hesitation settles in your hands
wrinkles cover all your garments
red buoys dot the summer river
half-filled wine bottles slant on the water like resting trout
all along, we have taken our own heads as paths
treading toward heaven’s journey, yet all we reach
is merely the backyard of the age, an idle factory cold and still
we scatter petals in the name of love, believing the lanterns
dragged underwater by fish at the source of dreams shall light up the future
Yet the future is nothing but a soft drizzle. Gnarled old trees
cast down billowing waves; sallow flesh lies prone
upon trays of fallen leaves
in the empty courtyard, only silence settles accounts
as a fading soul extinguishes the last lamp
Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, Ph.D, representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of Difficult writing and objectified poetics. He is also the first translator to introduce British and American postmodern poetry into Chinese, focusing on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Amy Lowell, Williams, Ashbery, Rosanna Warren.
He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 including 9 poetry collections. Ma Yongbo’s complete Chinese translation of Moby Dick has sold over 600,000 copies.
The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024) comprising 1178 poems, celebrate 40 years of writing poetry. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology.
In August 2026 he received the American poetry award: New Generation Beat Poet Laureate (2026-lifetime) China, from The National Beat Poetry Foundation (NBPF) in the United States.
THE BOTTLING PLANT SYNDROME: Looking for the Lost Space for Freedom and Creative Imagination in Educational Institutions
Dr. Jernail S. Anand
Is everything well with our education? There was a time when India was justly proud of its education. It produced minds who filled Silicon Valley, yet remained grounded in a sense of right and wrong. What has changed? Is this decline India-specific, or part of a worldwide phenomenon of erosion of value systems?
Successive changes in education policy were meant to meet the necessities and complexities of modern times. We have retained the high, moralistic vocabulary, but the spirit has devolved. Five decades ago, education had a moral quotient at its core. Even after professional degrees, men and women found their hands tremble before committing a wrong deed. The other crucial feature of that era was time – abundant, unstructured time – for teachers and students to think, debate, reflect and wander. That vacant space was the breeding ground of philosophy and creativity were born.
The Disappearance of Noble Intent
We have inherited the verbiage of our great tradition, but lost its essence while drawing the blueprints for the present system. The National Education Policy is an ambitious document, and its attempt to decolonize the Indian mind is welcome. Yet while correcting the colonial past, we risk losing some vital aspects of human development.
Around 2010, a decisive shift became visible in India, as it did globally. The good old values of honest labour gave way to a cut-throat world of competition in which survival itself became the only virtue. The only mantra was success. Those who believed otherwise were pushed to the margins. The belief systems of the old world of values were given an irreverent burial and replaced by a new worldview based on success and survival.
Education and the New Value-less System
When society consecrates success, educational institutions are pressed into service to deliver it. Today, no child studies a story whose moral is ‘Honesty is the best policy’. To say that honesty is outdated would hurt ancient wisdom, so a new, more acceptable word was coined to mask deceit, double-dealing and the ‘hell with it’ syndrome. The word is ‘smart’.
In the contemporary world, you are not required to be good, because goodness is seen as a passive virtue, unviable in a competitive world. Today everyone wants his offspring to be smart, which indirectly means they can be flexible with honesty. When a prospective bridegroom tells his prospective bride that he believes in honesty, she often smells disaster and walks away. This small social anecdote reveals a profound ethical inversion.
The Modus Operandi: No Vacant Spaces
To make students success-oriented in order to produce traders, professionals and consultants with high packages, it became necessary to abridge those vacant moments that provided space for the romance of creativity and imagination. Those recesses helped in the evolution of the human mind, leading to intellectual athleticism, freedom to think and to expand. Can we imagine another APJ Abdul Kalam emerging from today’s system to become the first citizen of the country? He was the byproduct of a system based on self-discipline and vacant time at the disposal of teachers and students for free talk and unguided discussion.
In the new system, that vacant space has been deliberately removed and filled with enforced administrative decisions. The role of teachers in deciding what to teach, how to teach and how much to teach has been compromised. All these initiatives have been arrogated by authority. Teachers are kept perpetually busy and students are left with no time to be with themselves. Universities and colleges now mimic bottling plants where students are produced like marketable finished products, carrying price tags. The cost is mentioned and the package is mentioned. Universities have to teach a uniform syllabus, in a uniform way. Higher bodies give sermons – sorry, seminars – on how to teach and how to prepare students for a busy tomorrow.
Academics and Formalism
The latest systems, proudly called knowledge systems, have converted studies into an act of formalism. Teachers remain overworked completing formalities rather than teaching. They are overloaded with files, reports, NAAC data and compliances, while students are overloaded with syllabi always in excess of their capacities. In this messy situation, we have made a faulty bargain. Our products are good for the market, but they are on slippery ground when it comes to performing well as human beings. Education is not simply about jobs. It goes beyond jobs. It is about human conduct, which has been entirely ignored.
Creating a Literati Elite
This knowledge empire is aimed at creating a literati elite. As education is increasingly privatized and the state withdraws from funding public institutions, only the affluent can send their wards to private schools charging exorbitant fees or to highly priced professional courses. Society is thus being sharply divided into haves and have-nots.
It can be conjectured that with money power, the under-qualified offspring of the rich will soon become architects, engineers, teachers and doctors, and we will have a second-rate elite in ruling positions, while the poor who had the capability to become true doctors and engineers will be pushed to ministerial positions like computer operators, or teachers on contract in private institutions. The second-rate will become Principals and Vice-Chancellors while those who truly deserved these positions will not even be on the faculty. Individuals may gain, but society as a whole is the ultimate loser.
Knowledge and Wisdom
Perhaps this is why ancient wisdom warned man about the fruit of knowledge without wisdom. Knowledge without an ethical anchor is a dangerous power. The vast empire of knowledge that has spread far and wide has little connection with the good, the honest and the righteous. It is often the world of the ‘smart’ people who can bend rules, break faith and twist the features of mankind.
The worst part of our current trajectory is that knowledge has remained confined to academic discussions and marks in examinations. We grant degrees, a formal exercise though necessary, but students lack the accompanying wisdom which must reflect in thought and action. We are creating a generation of efficient robots who listen to no music other than that of wealth, power and success.
In this industrial ecosystem which has grabbed the educational empire, the government seems to have staged a calculated withdrawal, appearing only to force standardization through regulatory bodies, cutting down on the freedom of teachers and students and forcing them into a dead routine antithetical to the very idea of freedom and creative imagination.
And the result? During the last twenty years, what kind of people have we produced? The grown-ups today are short on moral scruples. Ideals of the past have given way to deals. It is a fall, let us accept it, and try to wriggle out of this situation, if we do not want an indecent end of what is beautiful and enduring in homo sapiens.
Dr. Jernail S. Anand, with 200 books to his credit [20 epics] is a Chandigarh-based polymath, and a vital architect of the 21st century ethical literature whose seminal work ‘Lustus: The Prince of Darkness’ challenges the moral complacency of our era. Founding President of the International Academy of Ethics, and Laureate of Charter of Morava [Serbia], Seneca [Italy], Franz Kafka [Germany, Ukraine, Czech Rep] and Maxim Gorky [Russia], his name is inscribed on the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. He is an Honorary Member of the Serbian Writers Association, Belgrade. Bibliography:
Where the Silence Lives I smiled beneath the falling rain, While hiding every trace of pain. The world saw strength within my eyes, But never heard my quiet cries. I walked through nights without a star, Wondering where you truly are. Some memories refuse to fade, Some promises were never made. And if one day you think of me, Remember who I used to be— A heart that loved without a sound, A soul that searched but never found. So let the wind carry my name, Let time erase the olden flame. I’ll learn to bloom beneath the skies, Even with tears behind my eyes
In the shrines of knowledge that you once designed,
Enlightenment dies while the shallow arise.
Modest, bright girls are now pushed far behind,
As the crowd chases shadows, deceit, and disguise.
They look for disaster in lands far and wide,
Yet blind are the eyes in their very own head!
Mocking great Cholpon, forgetting their pride,
And erasing the roots where their ancestors bled.
Lives torn away under chains of despair,
Frozen in Siberia’s bitter, cold gleam…
Did you face the gallows for a future so bare?
Is this the tomorrow you wept for in dreams?
“The future belongs to the youth,” we proclaim,
Yet where are they marching, and what is their goal?
Awake from your slumber, look past the false game:
A book in the corner, a phone takes the soul.
Drunk on illusions, they shout “Real and Barca,”
Lost in the dramas that cloud and deceive.
Chasing K-pop stars, ignoring Qodiriy,
What hollow idols they’ve learned to believe!
Yet judge not too quickly, nor cast them aside,
Every dark era holds shadow and light…
Even amidst this commercialized tide,
There are youth who still keep their inner fire bright.
Do not ask me why I must lecture you so,
This is a reminder, no speech from a stage.
To witness this silence and let the truth go…
My aching, torn pen could not stand on the page.
When will we awaken? When will we return?
A true revolution begins at the door!
Tomorrow, before God, when lifetimes shall burn,
How will we answer for days that are no more?
{July 29, 2026 — 00:37}
—
### (UZBEK)
Yoshlarga murojaat…
Tarix sahifasin varaqlagan on,
Siz jon bergan millat “zombi” bo‘ldimi?
Siz kutgan oydinlar… siz orzu qilgan,
E’tiqod, hayolar bugun o‘ldimi?
Siz ochgan maktabda ma’rifat qolib,
Shaklu qiyofatga yopishdi hamma.
Iffatli qizlarni chetga surishib,
Asli yo‘q narsadan yasashdi muammo.
Ular fojiani boshqa yerda der,
Asli ko‘r bo‘lgani o‘z ko‘zlari-ku!
Cho‘lponni tanimay, masxara qilar,
Millatin unutgan shu oʻzlari-ku!
Zanjirlar ostida uzilgan umr,
Sibir sovug‘ida muzlagan vujud…
Axir shu kun uchun otildingizmi,
Siz qon yig‘lab kutgan kelajak shumi?
Kelajak yoshlarning qoʻlida deymiz…
Ammo, ular hozir ketur qay tomon.
Tan oling, uxlamang koʻrib turibsiz:
Kitob bir chekkada, qoʻlda telefon.
“Real – Barsa” deydi, xayol ila mast,
Dorama botqogʻidan chiqolmay qolgan.
K-pop guruhlarin, Qodiriy emas —
Oʻziga tengsiz bir oʻrnak deb olgan!
Xulosa chiqarmang oʻylanmay netmay,
Har zamonda bo‘lur doim oq-qora…
Shunday paytlarda ham oqim-la ketmay,
Aslin yoʻqotmagan yoshlar ham bor-a.
Demangki, nasihat qilur bu nega?
Nasihat emasdur, eslatma soʻzim.
Koʻrib koʻrmaslikka olib yashashga…
Chidolmadi shoʻrlik qalamim oʻzi.
Qachon ko‘zni ochib, qaytamiz dinga?
Ostonadan boshlar asl inqilob!
Ertaga Mahsharda, Haqning oldida —
Zoe bo‘lgan umrga ne beramiz javob?!
{29.07.2026 — 00:37}
Sabrina Ravshanova is an emerging 16-year-old poet from the Kashkadarya region, Kokdala district, Uzbekistan. She is currently a 10th-grade student at School No. 91. She is the co-author of several young writers’ collections. Her goal is to study Uzbek Philology at the university level and promote Uzbek national literature worldwide.
which is apparently how a city tells you now that one of its organs has failed.
No bell.
No man running up Yonge yelling fire.
Just somebody’s phone held sideways and black smoke climbing through the frame behind the gold woman who has been stepping out over the sidewalk for longer than most of the condos around her have been alive.
Zanzibar is burning down.
And the first thing Toronto will do is call it a building.
359 Yonge Street.
Commercial property.
Three alarm.
Road closure.
Structural damage.
Cause unknown.
All those little clean words we invented because things are easier when nothing has a body.
But this place has always had a body.
That’s practically the problem.
They built it in 1895 for undertakers.
Young & Millard.
Caskets upstairs.
Morgue downstairs.
Imagine that.
Before the tits there were corpses.
Before the pole there was the table.
Before somebody slipped a twenty into somebody’s garter somebody else was paying to put their mother in a box.
Same building.
That isn’t symbolism.
That’s Toronto.
We don’t tear the old purpose out.
We drywall over it.
Put another licence on the door.
Eventually there was food.
Then liquor.
Jazz.
R&B.
Rock and roll.
Girls dancing beside the band.
Then girls without the band.
At one point the liquor laws required food so there was apparently a ham sandwich that went around the room from table to table,
uneaten,
performing compliance.
I love that fucking sandwich.
I hope somebody saved it.
Patron saint of Toronto.
One piece of bread passing through everybody’s hands so the government could say desire had been served with lunch.
Then the city got taller.
Cleaner.
More expensive.
Every square foot learned how much it was worth.
Sam the Record Man went dark.
The signs came down.
Honest Ed’s went into memory.
Yonge Street started wearing glass like it had somewhere better to be.
And Zanzibar—
stupid, gold, horny Zanzibar—
stayed.
Ten-karat glazed tile.
Stars.
Neon.
A giant woman over the entrance with one leg extended like she owned the fucking street.
Which she did.
You could hate it.
You could laugh at it.
You could spend forty years pretending you had never looked up.
But you knew where you were when you saw her.
That matters.
Cities need things that cannot be mistaken for anywhere else.
And Zanzibar was never anywhere else.
It was exactly there.
Yonge Street.
Toronto.
Women going in for work.
Men going in pretending they weren’t lonely.
Tourists taking pictures.
Bay Street boys.
Students.
Regulars.
Bartenders.
Bouncers.
Cleaners.
Dancers counting money under fluorescent light after the fantasy was finished.
That’s the part I don’t want anybody cleaning up now.
Those women worked.
Their bodies were not the building’s mythology.
Their bodies paid bills.
Rent.
Food.
Phone.
Child care.
Debt.
Shoes.
A cab home at four in the morning because sometimes getting home alive costs more than the TTC.
Do not turn them into neon.
Do not turn them into the colourful history of Yonge Street.
They were working.
There were men downstairs once too.
Bodies everywhere.
Bodies looking.
Bodies being looked at.
Bodies converting loneliness into currency.
Bodies surviving another week.
A whole economy with its clothes off.
And underneath them,
the old morgue.
Of course.
The dead beneath the living while the living danced to stay living.
Tell me Toronto has ever written a better sentence.
Someone once danced there as the Queen of the Fire.
She ate flame.
I don’t know what to do with that now.
So I won’t do anything with it.
I’ll leave it where it is.
Queen of the Fire.
Zanzibar.
The roof burning.
Sometimes history doesn’t need a metaphor.
Sometimes the metaphor gets there first and waits eighty years for the fire department.
This morning smoke came through the roof.
The windows opened wrong.
Water went where liquor went.
Ash settled on the gold.
And somewhere behind all of that the old building remembered every version of what we asked it to hold.
The dead.
The drunk.
The band.
The dancer.
The lonely.
The horny.
The broke.
The beautiful.
The ridiculous.
The man with a twenty.
The woman earning it.
The sandwich nobody wanted.
The corpse somebody loved.
The stripper somebody loved.
The stripper somebody was.
Maybe that’s what I’m angry about.
Not that something old is burning.
Old things burn.
Old things fall down.
Toronto is excellent at helping.
I’m angry because we keep acting surprised when memory turns out to have an address.
We think history is Queen’s Park.
Casa Loma.
A plaque screwed into brick.
A black-and-white photograph of important men wearing hats.
No.
Sometimes history has tits.
Sometimes history smells like perfume and beer and bleach at four in the morning.
Sometimes history has a dressing room.
Sometimes history walks out the employee entrance with sore feet and cash folded somewhere safe.
Sometimes history is tacky as hell.
Sometimes history is gold tile on Yonge Street.
Sometimes history is a woman forty feet over your head who has been taking the same impossible step for decades
and never once put her foot down.
Until today.
Zanzibar is burning down.
Not metaphorically.
Not eventually.
Not in the careful language we’ll use after.
It is burning down while Toronto is still standing around it.
And tomorrow somebody will ask what should replace it.
They always do.
As if absence is a development opportunity.
As if every wound is really just available frontage.
As if the city cannot bear one square metre that isn’t becoming something else.
But tonight I don’t want the rendering.
I don’t want the proposal.
I don’t want the heritage strategy.
I don’t want some fucking condominium called
THE ZANZIBAR
with brushed brass lettering and a cocktail lounge in the lobby selling a seventeen-dollar drink named after a woman who used to work there.
Leave it.
For one night,
leave the hole open.
Let Yonge Street look directly into itself.
Let the glass towers see what they replaced.
Let the morgue and the stage and the dressing room and the bar and the gold woman occupy the same ruined air.
Let the city smell like itself.
Let everybody who ever looked up admit they looked.
Let everybody who ever worked there remain larger than the story we are about to tell about them.
And if she comes down—
the gold woman—
do not say she finally fell.
She didn’t.
Toronto burned the place beneath her.
There is a difference.
Joshua W.J. Brown is a Toronto-based writer and filmmaker. His recent work has appeared in Canadian Dimension, and his poetry has been accepted for publication by The Wise Owl.
