Wednesday, August 06, 2003
A night in the life of a medical mole.....
Here I am on nights in intensive care.... it's a strange existence, this, waking in the dark, wolfing down breakfast/dinner and sliding into the carpark just as everyone else is leaving, then driving home in the morning in that special post-nights zombie state. My nights vary from gentle parambulations around the unit and occasional pokes at patients, to all-out, frenzied, omigod admissions. The unit owns a vital piece of equipment - a cappuccino maker which I have discovered delivers a potent brew capable of zinging me up for four hours. An extra challenge to the night is therefore the careful titration of caffeine to deliver maximum zing at the all-important morning ward round, during which (after being up all night) we are expected to deliver lucid and pithy patient summaries.
Anyway. Here are some poems I wrote last year, though only recently revised:
Huangshan
This morning
I floated like a fairy
over rocks rising immortal
from a green sea.
Omnipotent I gazed
at yellow ants toiling uphill:
burdened with baskets
of human flotsam.
This afternoon
I am an ant:
climbing stone pathways
badged with tourist privilege
and two shining cameras.
How can my lens grasp
the majesty of peaks breeching
like graceful whales from autumn foam
Does it see
the golden sheen of rocks
enticing yellow butterflies
Above the clamorous surge of people
a pine sashays silently
towards a blue sky
- Huangshan is a set of peaks in China, revered for generations for their beauty, particularly for the way the clouds cling to the elegant rock peaks. A traditional haunt of poets and painters, which judging by the names of some of the "scenes", consumed a considerable amount of mind altering substances in the rarefied air. Today however Huangshan is the haunt of tourists who can cheat by taking the cable car to the top and staying in one of the hotels. Porters - too poor to own decent shoes - still use the breath-bursting stone steps uphill, carrrying loads of up to 50 kg, at US $0.50 per kg.
Wushan
The Goddess Peak looks skyward
sleek goats slide on her skirts
nonchalant to cities below
collapsing to the drum of sledgehammers
and red tape.
Bricks shower
from city gates
imploring heaven
but no answer.
Families squat
in concrete shells
screens flicker blue to claim
their lives have improved.
Sunshades sprout
On fresh ruins
With goods for sale:
See, life goes on.
Wushan is a major city near the Three Gorges, the stretch of the Yangtse renowned for its beauty and history, which is currently being engulfed as a result of rising water levels from the Yangtse Dam project. When my mother, my sister and I visited last year (just before the final closing of the dam), we found people still living in their houses by the river, even though the houses had been deroofed to encourage them to move to their new concrete-block apartments above the projected water line. Tens of millions of people have been dispossessed of their ancestral land as a result of the dam project.
New for Old
“New for old!” the vendors cry
Though poets wail and peasants sigh
A river of gold will rise to claim
These wild green gorges still untamed.
Gone the trees where monkeys play;
Defeated are the ancient gates
In tall pagodas fish will dance
While common man will have to chance
The gleaming modern concrete shells
Above the land their fathers tilled.
Who knows what the dam will bring?
Perhaps the Yangtze cannot win.
But when mankind a god will fake
It is a dangerous chance to take.
Piokiwi 4:58 am
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