The reading began with “This Minute”, an early work with a haunting refrain: the line “we live together on this planet of deserts and seas” is repeated, with a growing momentum, throughout the piece. Xi Chuan kicked things off with the Chinese, and then Lucas read the English translation. Most people in the room were bilingual, and could appreciate the poem both ways; my listening skills are still not at the stage where I can understand a poem delivered aloud, but nevertheless I caught enough tantalising glimpses of meaning to make the English reading, when it came, even more fulfilling. It was rather like looking at the sky through a thin headscarf, or a thick cloud of Beijing pollution, understanding just enough of what I saw out there to know that it was a sky and that when the moment came for me to see it clearly, it would be beautiful.