Its Manchurian windows have vanished.
The parapets, verandas, arches, cornices, railings, balconies,
triangular plum blossoms proudly growing from its walls,
the cat living in the staircase, the rain on the street . . .
all are gone.
This is a strange world:
coral vines slumbering at the threshold, prayers stirring the twilight.
In the scorching sun, the fishing port is a miscellany
of bare feet, sweat, old buses, portable dwellings.
Dried salted fish, wearing trench coats, stand in line on a coir
          rope, calling out to their distant relatives under the sea.
A deity on the wooden table cranes his rainbow-colored head,
asking the mortal world for black-and-white.

Here is the end of the South Ocean:
I grow sad, bittersweet, joyous, then sad again.
I have erased all the complicated confrontations.
The sea and starry sky, though unable to provide an answer,
give aspiration:
I’m willing to live in the beautiful riddle.

Where the Qilou vanished, I carry its ruins in my body.
This is a conclusion.
This is a beginning.