It begins with

a spark. The wind knows,

slipping through the square-shaped mouth

in dark-grey of a brick furnace.

It’s breathing. Flying up.

Bursting into shapeless flames.

There are people, their eyes

telling a sterile apathy, not going with

their obsessive hands to put

the gifts in. They are murmuring

an ambiguous prayer, to the hopping spirit to

morph piles of four-cornered paper sheets,

which take the form of American dollar,

Hong Kong dollar and Chinese Yuan,

into ashes. They turn around and walk away afterwards.