macau
I went to Macau once
years ago
long before your time ~
We took the big double hull ferry from Hong Kong on a pearl-grey
China day
all low overcast and wet with a petro-chemical humidity
across the glassy sea and into a blind fog ~
Halfway there the hulls rose up high against a singular large swell
out of nowhere ~
And fell back hard into the sharp trough
everything spilt
everyone stood to the windows, but the disturbed sea was long past ~
Women screamed, and a staccato muttering overtook the Chinese aboard
gamblers not ready for a final wager
yet
nausea, a little hysteria, everyone unsettled ~
The city when arrived at, was cold
wet
the streets hard driven with a moderate onshore gale
unwelcome, this flinging rain ~
A black bearded portuguese strode through us as we walked towards the town centre
prideful coloniser
his office a ruin of bypassed commerce and seaside osmosis ~
How the cold rain belted down upon the street pork sellers,
waving their skewered redmeat
skinny chinamen ducking from darkdoored restaurants and across
wetted roads, jabbering sometongue, hungry ~
Later I looked out of the hotel window at a twenty story block
of apartments
over the road
framed by a spiders web of bamboo scaffolding
part built
and worried in the buffeting wind ~
One apartment on the very top floor
had all its lights on
home
the rest of the building loomed dark
from bottom to top ~
What a lonely ride up ~
There is a statue by Saint Pauls that overlooks darkest Macau Chinatown
and that other country across the Pearl ~
Francisco de Jaso y Azpilicueta passed through these lands centuries ago
Francis Xavier ~
Another lonely rider
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