Jin Mao
Lola said she’d cried when the lift opened
onto the golden light of the atrium:
It was like nothing I’d ever seen before.
We’d only gone for a coffee with Carrie’s friend
and in the lift you don’t feel you’re going up
and then wham! That golden aura. It’s indescribable.
Later that day I went to the park near Carrie’s;
I needed to be on my own for a bit but I left
by a different gate to the one I’d gone in;
they all look the same until you’re outside.
Everything looked so weird and strange, I panicked.
Then I remembered the teahouse rendezvous
so I went to a traffic cop and made tea drinking signs
and he pointed just as I heard my grand-daughter’s shout
and Carrie waving from the opposite pavement.
That afternoon we saw some jade Buddhas;
not the usual fat overstuffed ones but young
and handsome Buddhas. And the jade was white.
I didn’t know you could get white jade.
They were so serene, not like the twisted pain,
blood and thorns we have to put up with
but a sort of radiance like in that wonderful atrium.
She couldn’t remember who designed the Jin Mao but said
it was the third highest in the world and had sixty lifts.
Page(s) 42
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