(Hardly a day goes by here, when they're not digging up the streets, so in the spirit of if you can't beat 'em join 'em, I've written a poem of appreciation for road works.)
Today they're digging the roads,
Scraping back the surface of the city,
Revealing how it works.
Lying in the mud,
A mess of pipes and wires.
It looks chaotic, but it isn't.
It's an intricate grid, through which
The power of mathematics brings us everything,
Secretly.
Gas from beneath the South China Sea
Heats the soup.
Water from Dongjiang reservoirs
Falls from the shower.
Pulses of electricity
From an atom split in Shenzhen
Hum down the lines
Like a flock of mosquitoes
To make toast.
The damage is repaired.
The diggers dump the mud back.
Re-tar the road.
The grid is beautiful,
Yet nobody wants to see it.
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