He steps out of the courthouse,
his shadow dancers the guards

are locked in stride. We're throwing words at him,
words like stones, stones like words.

A Burberry raincoat
taut over his infamous head,

elbows like clipped wings,
someone in the crowd says

they discovered millions stashed
in his cousin's watersilo in the countryside

where pigeons roost and shit.
Die, Pig! Shout the grandmas.

Good riddance! Shout their husbands
stooped on walking sticks,

sitting on collapsible chairs,
as once they bellowed forty years before

when they were red guards
smashing priceless vases,

burning bourgeois novels,
chopping French furniture for firewood,

hanging Professor Liu
from his favorite willow tree

in the courtyard, like wet laundry
pounded on stones like words,

words like stones on the Emerald Lake
where a house burns,

where red-crowned cranes nest,
where they're washing their hands.