Firecrackers

Firecrackers bursting and popping

Children's unending delight

Endless banging

Far into the night

The staccato rhythm

Trailing into the distance

Like far-off machine-guns

Marking the spaces

Of the night time darkness

Measuring the size of distant places

Filling the emptiness

A perennial racket

A millennial man-made thunder

A short-fused rocket

A little errant schoolboy's plunder

A box of matches in his pocket

A source of endless Chinese wonder